Queensland's weather bureau boss has hit back at claims it dropped the ball during one of Brisbane's worst storms in recent years
THE Weather Bureau's Queensland chief says Saturday's superstorm didn't meet warning parameters after complaints it failed to issue timely alert - but they'll review weekend decisions.
Regional director Rob Webb said because it was an unusual event that happened early in the morning and that they didn't think it was going to be a severe event.
"It just blew up on the city," he told The Courier-Mail after the press conference.
Mr Webb said as the storm was approaching it didn't meet the Bureau's parameters for issuing a storm warning.
"You aim to put out warnings ahead of the weather but it's not always possible. The forecaster made a call that this one would stay under the parameters and pass through".
Mr Webb denied staffing was an issue and that they had six staffers on both Saturday and Sunday.
How the Energex Lightning Tracker showed the passage of the weekend storms.
Cr Quirk said the forecasting was either a feast or a famine with few warnings issued on Saturday while dozens were issued on Sunday.
Mr Webb told ABC breakfast radio this morning he had full confidence in the team but would be reviewing the weekend's forecast decisions to learn from them.
"We review those decisions so we can learn to make best decisions for the next one. What we don't want to do is reach for the warning trigger for every thunderstorm" he said.
"We focus more attention on the point when a storm gets to the point where it gets to the point where it causes damage."
"We will go back and look at those decisions we made and we won't just be moving on. We'll be watching it closely."
Brisbane has been battered by storms for a second day, with the airport closed and large hailstones falling.
Mr Webb said the Bureau watches the weather every six minutes, and would have been weighing up whether to issue a message "as the community [was] prepared already".
"There is a lot of messaging out in the community that the weather would be bad; we don't want to warn for every thunderstorm that would lead to complete complacency in the community," he said.
He said that the message he wanted to get out was that, even without the warnings from BOM, thunderstorms can be very dangerous.
"Once we are forecasting thunderstorms, people should be aware that they can change in their structure fairly quickly and really need to be keeping an eye on the environment, as well keeping an eye on our website for warnings," he said.
The Courier-Mail reported this morning that the Federal Government was warned a year ago the Bureau was "at the limit of its human capacity" to provide an extreme weather forecasting and warning service.
But it has so far provided less than $5 million in this year's Budget to boost frontline staff numbers, which have fallen by almost 42 per cent in a decade, according to an Environment Department-commissioned review of the bureau.
Lightning over Brisbane City from Ascot hill. Picture: Marc Robertson
It is not known if staffing levels were the reason the bureau failed to issue any specific warning about the freak storm that smashed into Brisbane's inner suburbs late morning on Saturday - but calls continued yesterday for a proper please-explain.
The front of Saturday's freak storm smashed into the inner northern suburbs about 10.30am. Twenty minutes later, the bureau issued its first specific storm warning.
By then the front of the storm had passed over the inner-western suburbs and the central business district and was almost at the coast.
LIGHTNING TRACKER: See how storms moved across the southeast between 6am Saturday and 6am Sunday (8mb)
The Courier-Mail yesterday contacted the bureau's Queensland regional director Rob Webb direct on his mobile phone, but he referred the inquiry to a spokeswoman - who first complained about having to work on the weekend - and then reissued a statement issued Saturday.
That statement said it was "difficult to predict in detail" what would happen with particular storm cells, and that the freak event had only started to show signs of severe storm characteristics as it approached the central business district.
It said: "The Bureau of Meteorology doesn't aim to issue warnings for every thunderstorm, but uses thresholds to ensure there isn't complacency in the community due to over-warning."
That threshold includes expected winds over 90km/h, hailstones bigger than 2cm, and very heavy rainfall.
Nevertheless, following the criticism of its lack of action on Saturday the bureau was in warning overdrive yesterday - issuing dozens of warnings throughout the day as storms rolled across the southeast.
Despite nobody from the bureau being willing to talk to The Courier-Mail yesterday, Dr Richard Wardle from the bureau managed to make himself available to speak on-camera to Channel 7 last night.
Dr Wardle said: "(On Saturday morning) we were tracking the system well out to the west and Darling Downs and it just - I won't use the word exploded - but it developed rapidly over a few minutes."
Ipswich city councillor Paul Tully accused the bureau of having been "asleep on the job" on Saturday morning. He had managed to warn of the storm on his Facebook page at 10.21am - nearly 30 minutes before the bureau's warning.
LIGHTNING TRACKER: See how storms moved across the southeast between 6am and 6pm Sunday (8mb)
Other critics inundated the bureau's Facebook page on Saturday asking why there had been no warning until after the event. The bureau did not respond to their concerns.
Weatherwatch's Anthony Cornelius yesterday said it was "unfortunate" there had been no specific warning issued, and that he would have issued a warning when it hit Gatton, just before 10am." In my opinion there was definitely grounds for that storm to be warned," Mr Cornelius said.
Jeff Higgins from Higgins Storm Chasing said the bureau's strict adherence to its warning "threshold" made it difficult for residents to be alerted in time.
The bureau came under fire during last year's floods after it failed to issue a flood warning for the hardest-hit town of Grantham until 4.16pm, more than an hour after the disaster. A second top priority flash flood warning came at 5pm.
Mr Cornelius, a meteorologist, had predicted devastating flash flooding hours earlier and at the time questioned why the bureau had failed to make a similar prediction.
- additional reporting Robert Macdonald and Sophie Elsworth
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