Eight Dead in Australian Christmas and Boxing Day Storms

Eight people are dead and another is missing after catastrophic thunderstorms on Australia’s east coast produced flash flooding and hailstorms over Christmas and Boxing Day.

On Christmas night, severe thunderstorms hit south-east Queensland, NSW and Victoria and caused flash flooding and fallen trees. The storms left more than 120,000 homes without power. Severe weather warnings were issued across the states, and more than 1200 calls for help to state emergency services were made. Sydney Airport recorded its wettest Christmas day on record.

The severe weather across all three states continued through to Boxing Day, with hail measuring 4cm recorded in the Hunter Valley, that shattered windows and damaged roofs.

Three people have been found dead after a boat carrying eleven people on a fishing trip capsized off Green Island in Moreton Bay, south-east Queensland. Eight passengers were taken to hospital and on Wednesday a search rescue mission recovered the bodies of the three missing passengers, aged 48, 59 and 69.

In a press conference, Queensland police said at 5pm on Boxing Day, a large storm came over Moreton Bay, which capsized the group’s 49-foot yacht.

The body of a 9-year-old girl was found in a storm drain in the Brisbane suburb of Rochdale, after severe storms ripped through south-east Queensland on Monday and Tuesday. The girl was reported missing on Tuesday.

A 59-year-old woman was killed on Monday after she was hit by a fallen tree on the Gold Coast, and on Tuesday a 44-year-old man was killed by a fallen branch on his property in Caringal.

A woman died at the Buchan in East Gippsland, Victoria, after a campground was hit by flash flooding. In Gympie, the body of a 40-year-old woman was recovered, after she and two others were swept into floodwaters near the Kidd Bridge.

Emergency services are looking for a 19-year-old man who was swept out to sea as he attempted to rescue a family member near Congo Beach, on the New South Wales South Coast.

Jonathan Howell from the Bureau of Meteorology told the ABC there is currently a thunderstorm risk across the east coast of Australia, all the way from the New South Wales-Queensland border, into the Whitsundays and tropics, including Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Southwards, in NSW, there is a severe risk of thunderstorms near Lismore, the south of Sydney and down to the Victorian border.

In Victoria there is a risk of severe thunderstorms across Gippsland, potentially edging into Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

Howell said the bad weather in the south east of the country would be "calming" and “remain quite cool”, but it would soon get “very hot” in Queensland and northern NSW.

“It will get very hot across Queensland and northern NSW and Brisbane, going for a scorching 36 degrees [on Thursday] and into the high 30s for northern NSW and the rest of south-east Queensland,” he said. 

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and Twitter.