More wild weather tipped for region

THE Gold Coast is due to be hit by more wild weather after a booming thunderstorm dumped hailstones and heavy rain on the city on Monday.

More than 20 calls for help were attended to by the State Emergency Service (SES).

RACQ received 74 insurance claims by Tuesday afternoon – 18 claims for home damage and 56 for motor vehicle damage.

Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) meteorologist Helen Reid said the storm cell which descended on much of the city brought 103 millimetres to Molendinar.

Coolangatta, at the “edge of the storm”, received just 25mm, while the Gold Coast Seaway was drenched with 40mm.

Continuous hail pelted the city, causing damage to some vehicles, while thunder rocked homes.

Energex recorded 2964 Gold Coast residents without power on Monday afternoon in suburbs including Arundel, Benowa, Molendinar, Parkwood and Worongary.

Molendinar was the worst affected with almost 1000 homes suffering outages from the storm.

Ms Reid said the “actionpacked” storm was “right on top” of suburbs such as Southport and “just kept on going”.

“It was due to so much moisture in the atmosphere and the warm temperatures,” she said.

She warned storms were predicted for the rest of the week.

Ms Reid urged Coast residents to keep on top of any warnings issued by the BOM.

“Hopefully, anything that comes through in the next few days won’t be quite the actionpacked feature it was on Monday,” she said.

Temperatures are expected to drop to a minimum of 16C on Wednesday and a maximum of 29C on Saturday and Sunday.