BAMOS
Jun 2020
20
Article
Queensland tornado database review
and update
David Grant
Bureau of Meteorology
Email: david.grant@bom.gov.au
The Bureau maintains a database of all noted severe
thunderstorm events in Australia since the 18th century in its
Severe Storms Archive. In the last couple of years, there has
been a great deal of work dedicated to updating this database
to ensure that there is a more complete historical record of all
the noted tornado events in Queensland between 1970–2017.
This work included the following:
• Addition of numerous events that were not in the
database including the outbreak associated with
ex‐tropical cyclone Oswald in 2013 (see Figure 1), the
Pratten tornado in 2013 and the Avenell Heights and
River Heads tornadoes in 2017.
• Thorough review of most fields associated with each
tornado event in the database. This included the
assignment of a Fujita number (based on the damage
specifications documented in Fujita (1971)) for each event
based on any available notes, images, internal reports
and/or media articles (most events in the database had
not been assigned a Fujita scale rating prior to the review).
• Review of the date and time of each event as most reports
are noted in Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST)
in Queensland, but events are stored in Coordinated
Universal Time (UTC) in the Severe Storms Archive.
• Transfer of any waterspout events that impacted the
Queensland coast into the tornado database.
• Removal of any funnel cloud events from the database.
• Additional comments around each event.
A number of fields associated with each tornado event in
the database were difficult to obtain based on the available
information including:
• Damage total.
• Insurance payout.
• Number of deaths and injuries.
• Exact time of the event.
It is important to note that other tornado events are likely to
have occurred in Queensland between 1970–2017, though
have not been recorded due to the following reasons:
• It occurred in an unpopulated area.
• It was not witnessed by anyone.
• It was not reported.
Figure 1: Mean Sea Level Chart related to ex‐tropical cyclone Oswald on 26 January 2013 (left) and associated infrared
satellite image (right). Note: satellite image originally processed by the Bureau of Meteorology from the geostationary
meteorological satellite MTSAT operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. Source: Bureau of Meteorology