BRISBANE: Planes were flipped and roofs ripped off when hail and powerful winds tore through Australia’s east coast, leaving a damage bill of more than Aus$100 million ($85 million) as the army helped clear up on Friday.
The storm, which officials said was one of the worst seen in the country and the strongest to hit the city of Brisbane in three decades, rained hailstones the size of tennis balls on cars and buildings late Thursday, flooding streets and injuring 39 people.
Gusts of up to 140kmh (87 mph), as strong as a Category Two cyclone, also uprooted trees and brought down power lines.
In one of the more dramatic scenes, at least four light planes were flipped over at Archerfield Airport, 11 km from Brisbane’s central business district.
“It looks like the apocalypse,” one resident of an apartment building that had its metal roof wrenched off by the storm and blown more than 100 meters (330 feet) told reporters.
Another Brisbane resident said the hailstones were traveling “like bullets.”
“My daughter was crying. It was like a freight train coming straight at you, just like a roar, it was that loud,” John Arthur told national radio. “The size of the hailstones were decimating everything in its path.”
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said it was the “biggest storm that has hit Brisbane since 1985” but was grateful no one was seriously hurt.
“It was a terrible storm, but thankfully no one’s been seriously injured or worse,” he told ABC radio.
The tempest started as a routine storm south of Brisbane on Thursday afternoon and tracked north, encountering moist air from sea breezes that helped it develop into a supercell, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Pradeep Singh said.
“A supercell has a vortex — the air is spinning around it as it moves up. When that happens, it takes the moisture above the freezing level and keeps it there for a long time,” the senior meteorologist said.
“Rain particles keep developing bigger and bigger into hail. And because the draft is so strong in supercells, they tend to stay for a long time up in the air and when they reach the right weight, they start dropping down.”
Queensland’s Transport Minister Scott Emerson said Brisbane had received an “extraordinary” battering, as the insurance bill rose sharply through the day.
The Insurance Council of Australia declared it a catastrophic weather event. A spokeswoman said it had so far received 15,060 claims for insured losses of Aus$109.2 million.
Insurer Suncorp said it fielded some 1,000 home and 1,600 motor claims following the storm.
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Planes flipped, roofs ripped as ‘Supercell storm’ batters Brisbane
Planes flipped, roofs ripped as ‘Supercell storm’ batters Brisbane
Rubio to visit eastern Europe, bolster ties with pro-Trump leaders
- Energy cooperation and NATO commitments will be discussed
- Trump’s hard-right supporters view Hungary’s Orban as a model
MUNICH: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to begin a two-day trip on Sunday, to bolster ties with Slovakia and Hungary, whose conservative leaders, often at odds with other European Union countries, have warm ties with President Donald Trump.
Rubio will use the trip to discuss energy cooperation and bilateral issues, including NATO commitments, the State Department said in an announcement last week.
“These are countries that are very strong with us, very cooperative with the United States, work very closely with us, and it’s a good opportunity to go see them and two countries I’ve never been in,” Rubio told reporters before departing for Europe on Thursday.
Rubio, who in his dual role also serves as Trump’s national security adviser, will meet in Bratislava on Sunday with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who visited Trump in Florida last month. The US diplomat’s trip follows his participation in the Munich Security Conference over the last few days.
WILL MEET VIKTOR ORBAN ON MONDAY
On Monday, Rubio is expected to meet with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who is trailing in most polls ahead of an election in April when he could be voted out of power.
“The President said he’s very supportive of him, and so are we,” Rubio said. “But obviously we were going to do that visit as a bilateral visit.”
Orban, one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, is considered by many on the American hard-right as a model for the US president’s tough policies on immigration and support for families and Christian conservatism. Budapest has repeatedly hosted Conservative Political Action Conference events, which bring together conservative activists and leaders, with another due in March.
TIES WITH MOSCOW AND CLASHES WITH THE EU
Both Fico and Orban have clashed with EU institutions over probes into backsliding on democratic rules.
They have also maintained ties with Moscow, criticized and at times delayed the imposition of EU sanctions on Russia and opposed sending military aid to Ukraine.
Even as other European Union countries have secured alternative energy supplies after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, including by buying US natural gas, Slovakia and Hungary have also continued to buy Russian gas and oil, a practice the United States has criticized.
Rubio said this would be discussed during his brief tour, but did not give any details.
Fico, who has described the European Union as an institution that is in “deep crisis”, has showered Trump with praise saying he would bring peace back to Europe.
But Fico criticized the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January.
Hungary and Slovakia have also so far diverged from Trump on NATO spending.
They have raised defense spending to NATO’s minimum threshold of 2 percent of GDP.
Fico has, however, refused to raise expenditure above that level for now, even though Trump has repeatedly asked all NATO members to increase their military spending to 5 percent. Hungary has also planned for 2 percent defense spending in this year’s budget.
On nuclear cooperation, Slovakia signed an agreement with the United States last month and Fico has said US-based Westinghouse was likely to build a new nuclear power plant.
He also said after meeting the chief of France’s nuclear engineering company Framatome during the week he would welcome more companies taking part in the project.
Rubio will use the trip to discuss energy cooperation and bilateral issues, including NATO commitments, the State Department said in an announcement last week.
“These are countries that are very strong with us, very cooperative with the United States, work very closely with us, and it’s a good opportunity to go see them and two countries I’ve never been in,” Rubio told reporters before departing for Europe on Thursday.
Rubio, who in his dual role also serves as Trump’s national security adviser, will meet in Bratislava on Sunday with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who visited Trump in Florida last month. The US diplomat’s trip follows his participation in the Munich Security Conference over the last few days.
WILL MEET VIKTOR ORBAN ON MONDAY
On Monday, Rubio is expected to meet with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who is trailing in most polls ahead of an election in April when he could be voted out of power.
“The President said he’s very supportive of him, and so are we,” Rubio said. “But obviously we were going to do that visit as a bilateral visit.”
Orban, one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, is considered by many on the American hard-right as a model for the US president’s tough policies on immigration and support for families and Christian conservatism. Budapest has repeatedly hosted Conservative Political Action Conference events, which bring together conservative activists and leaders, with another due in March.
TIES WITH MOSCOW AND CLASHES WITH THE EU
Both Fico and Orban have clashed with EU institutions over probes into backsliding on democratic rules.
They have also maintained ties with Moscow, criticized and at times delayed the imposition of EU sanctions on Russia and opposed sending military aid to Ukraine.
Even as other European Union countries have secured alternative energy supplies after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, including by buying US natural gas, Slovakia and Hungary have also continued to buy Russian gas and oil, a practice the United States has criticized.
Rubio said this would be discussed during his brief tour, but did not give any details.
Fico, who has described the European Union as an institution that is in “deep crisis”, has showered Trump with praise saying he would bring peace back to Europe.
But Fico criticized the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January.
Hungary and Slovakia have also so far diverged from Trump on NATO spending.
They have raised defense spending to NATO’s minimum threshold of 2 percent of GDP.
Fico has, however, refused to raise expenditure above that level for now, even though Trump has repeatedly asked all NATO members to increase their military spending to 5 percent. Hungary has also planned for 2 percent defense spending in this year’s budget.
On nuclear cooperation, Slovakia signed an agreement with the United States last month and Fico has said US-based Westinghouse was likely to build a new nuclear power plant.
He also said after meeting the chief of France’s nuclear engineering company Framatome during the week he would welcome more companies taking part in the project.
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