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More severe storms to come this summer

Updated November 23, 2012 21:41:00

Queensland's Bureau of Meteorology Director Rob Webb says the state is in for some severe weather.

Source: 7.30 Queensland | Duration: 3min 50sec

Topics: weather, qld, brisbane-4000


CHRIS O'BRIEN: This week, the Bureau of Meteorology issued its latest seasonal outlook, providing a long range forecast on likely conditions for the Australian summer. Kathy McLeish spoke to the Director of Queensland's Bureau of Meteorology about the stormy season ahead for this state.

KATHY McLEISH: Rob Webb, welcome to the program. The new seasonal outlook is out - it's been neutral conditions but that doesn't mean neutral weather does it?

ROB WEBB, DIRECTOR, QLD BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY: No well Queensland has got use to seeing some very severe weather over the summer months. We have tropical cyclones, bushfires hailstorms and flooding. So this is the time of year that people tend to raise their awareness for weather around the country neutral conditions doesn't mean benign conditions there will still be severe weather conditions across the course of the summer.

KATHY McLEISH: Neutral is not La Nina, but South East Queensland has already experience severe storms with softball size hail. What's the difference?

ROB WEBB: Well to start with bushfires might start with bushfires it's been a very lead into the summer so there's a lot of fuel out there that's very dry so until the wet does kick in then we will see that risk of bushfires running and across right up to the northern regions and right down south of the border that's a risk. As far as the severe thunderstorms go the fact that we get back to the neutral conditions probably contrast to previous years were we've been dominated by the heavy rain style thunderstorm. We should see this year return to more typically hail storm wind storm type storms across the southeast in particular which is really the hot spot of severe weather in the state historically around Brisbane there's been some major thunderstorms the big hail storm in 1985 were I think 20,000 houses were damaged. Those types of large storms including the Gap storm from several years ago that's the kind of thing we really try and raise people's awareness that's leading into this time of year and in a neutral year that's when we're more likely to get that kind of thunderstorm.

KATHY McLEISH: So what's the difference between the conditions that you see now and what we saw in the lead up to 2011.

ROB WEBB: Basically the way that two or three years ago we had a lot of indicators pointing at a wet season we had the Coral Sea warm we had the northern parts of Australia warm the Indian Ocean warm and the Pacific Ocean pointing to wet weather all of those things were pointing to weather than normal conditions. This year there's only the Indian Ocean is really the thing that's pointing towards slightly wetter than normal conditions. But even in the deepest drought Queensland gets floods and can get very severe floods. So it's not as widespread as we might have expected back in 2010/11 so there is still potential for those short burst of rainfall that can cause quite bad flooding.

KATHY McLEISH: The Bureau came in for criticism over its warnings for the first severe storm of the season and there's been concern raised over the $13 million budget cuts for the bureau, are there things that you will change because of the result of that?

ROB WEBB: We were really comfortable that most people that woke up on Saturday morning we're aware that severe thunderstorms were possible we felt that we had really good penetration of those messages it was as almost unprecedented how early we were warning people of the potential on the weekend. So overall that whole service we were really comfortable that we got some messages out. We'll always go back and post an analysis and have a look at how we responded to that first thunderstorm and whether we could have done something differently. I'm really comfortable with the way the forecasters performed on that day.

KATHY McLEISH: There is one thing you would change though the Weather Bureau has been successful in having Face book close down 35 accounts that mimic the Weather Bureau site. How much of a problem is that?

ROB WEBB: The minute in times of emergency that there's conflicting information that's really that can be really bad when you've got the primary warning provider being mimicked by other people that's a pretty dangerous situation for the community because all that does is lead to uncertainty and it is so important in these big events to have a good consistent message and we work really hard with people like the ABC in getting those messages out consistently and in a timely manner.

KATHY McLEISH Rob Webb thanks for joining us.

ROBB WEBB: Thank you.