This triggered the following urgent BOM alert:
TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING for DAMAGING WIND and LARGE HAILSTONES
For people in parts of the
Darling Downs and Granite Belt and Southeast Coast Forecast Districts.
Issued at 1:47 pm Thursday, 22 November 2012.
Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce damaging winds and large hailstones in the warning area over the next several hours. Locations which may be affected
include Warwick, Toowoomba, Stanthorpe, Boonah, Allora and Clifton.
Now take a look at the second radar image which appeared on the BOM website at 10.12 am Saturday depicting a massive 40km storm front which hit Ipswich and Brisbane but did not trigger an official BOM alert until 20 minutes AFTER it had hit the heart of Brisbane.
It seems BOM's regional director Rob Webb - despite his public posturing - must have put a bomb under his troops to issue alerts when considered prudent and to err on the side of caution - irrespective of all the claptrap regarding size of hailstones and other usual indicative criteria.
It's taken a week but the tirades of criticism against BOM seem to have jolted them into a renewed sense of reality.
Now, all we are still waiting on is for Rob Webb to say sorry for last weekend's fiasco.
But on reflection, yesterday's initial warning which was followed by numerous updates, fresh alerts and new warnings was probably Rob Webb's own way of saying "sorry".
Unfortunately, his tenure in the Brisbane office will always be remembered for last weekend's mighty clanger.
