It’s been an electric start to the new year as lightning flashes illuminate the skies and the roll of thunder becomes an all too familiar sound.
Sydney’s skies turned dark around 2pm (AEDT) and parts of the city were pounded by hail stones.
“South-east Australia will see showers and thunderstorms in the coming days, possibly severe in parts of Victoria, NSW and SE Queensland,” the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said.
“Cooler air will push over behind the storms, conditions clearing towards the weekend.”
It comes after Weatherzone confirmed 1,023,173 strikes were detected within 700 kilometres of Wagga Wagga on Monday, January 2.
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A cold front is also stretching across much of the country, but was “particularly unstable on Monday because of a combination of an upper trough”, which met with the warm air mass driven by Ellie.
Many of the storms produced by the system were “severe”, and were accompanied by large hail and damaging winds.
“A wind gust of 96km/h was recorded in Wilcannia, its strongest gust in three years,” Weatherzone said.
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Ex-tropical cyclone Ellie is the second storm of cyclone season, which typically runs from the start of November to the end of April.
