Moody Australia : Amazing pictures of stormy Aussie shores - Did you know that the area that experiences the most thunderstorm days in the world is northern Lake Victoria in Uganda, Africa?
Australia has its fair share of scary stormy weather also. Take a look at these amazing pictures of storms across the continent and learn more about the disruptive weather pattern.

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Surprise - Severe thunderstorms can occur at any time of the year in Queensland. However, most strike between September and March when the supply of solar energy is greatest

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Storms ahead - South-east Queensland (and the central New South Wales coast) experience the most damaging individual storms anywhere in Australia.

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Thunderbolts and lightening - On average, a severe thunderstorm can produce approximately 6,000 lightning strikes every minute.

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Fun fact - Lightning is one of nature's most recurrent and common spectacles. Around the world, there are over 3,000,000 flashes every day. That's around 44 strikes every second.

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Tree strike - Trees can often be destroyed by lightning strikes. When lightning hits a tree, it usually travels just below the tree's bark where there is a layer of sap and water.

This layer becomes instantly heated and expands causing the bark to be blasted off the tree and sometimes splitting the wood.

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Intense - While the intensity of a lightning strike can make them appear as thick bolts across the sky, the actual width of a lightning bolt is only about 2-3 cm. The average length of a lightning bolt is about 3-5 km. 

The charge carried down this small channel is so intense that the temperature of the lightning reaches 30,000 °C, that's five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.

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Beach strike -

When lightning strikes sand or sandy soil, it fuses together the grains to create a small glass-like tube known as a fulgurite.

They are not only prized by collectors, they are also of great scientific value in demonstrating past occurrence of lightning storms.

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Damage - Each year, on average, severe storms are responsible for more damage (as measured by insurance costs) than tropical cyclones, earthquakes, floods, or bushfires.

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Power - Most thunderstorms do not reach the level of intensity needed to produce flash floods, cyclones, wind gusts, or hail, but they all produce lightning which can cause death, injury and damage.

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Death - Storms do kill people. In Australia, lightning accounts for five to ten deaths and more than 100 injuries annually. More deaths occur when strong winds cause tree limbs to fall, debris to become projectiles and small boats in open water to capsize.

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Cow death - In March of this year, a farmer in Queensland found six of his cows struck down dead due to a deadly lightning strike.

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Roo data - There is no statistical data on the number of wild animals killed by lightning. However, one can assume a few kangaroos have met a singed end out in the wild.

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Radiator - Average lightning bolts carry a current of 10,000 to 30,000 amps.  An average radiator draws ten amps.

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Payout - Insurance companies suffered the biggest payout year for storm-related claims in 2016 after a series of destructive storms in South Australia.

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Damp Darwin - Darwin received its heaviest rain in six months as a rare September shower this month.

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Floods - Cyclone Debbie caused untold flooding damage across Southern Queensland and Northern NSW in 2017.

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Insane - Up until the late 18th century, it was believed that ringing church bells repelled lightning so many church bells bore the inscription 'fulgura frango', meaning 'I chase lightning'.

During a thunderstorm, bell ringers would run to the bell tower to ring the bells. However, a high tower with a metal bell was in fact about the worst place to be. Between 1753 and 1786 in France, 103 bell-ringers were struck by lightning and killed, resulting in the custom being banned.

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Late spring - It feels like spring hasn't started in parts of southeastern Australia, with some places registering their lowest September temperatures in years during the last couple of mornings.

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Not all thunderstorms - Not all thunderstorms are the same. There are three main types of thunderstorms.

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Single cell - Most thunderstorms are single-cell, or a storm that pulses up, rains for half an hour, and dissipates. When that storm collapses, the wind from its downdraft can trigger more storms in a chain reaction.

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Multi-cell - There are also multi-cell thunderstorms, the most common of which are squall lines.

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Supercell - The third type of storm is a supercell, or a thunderstorm that has a rotating updraft. The twisting updraft helps supercells survive for many hours and produce more severe weather—larger hail, higher winds, and stronger tornadoes—than a normal thunderstorm.

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Human storm - Humans can't control the weather, but our actions can indirectly influence where thunderstorms form. Studies have shown that increased temperatures in and around cities, due to the urban heat island effect, can trigger thunderstorms that wouldn't have otherwise formed in these areas if the city and its streets weren't there.

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Evidence - There's also some evidence that unstable air warmed by steam released by the cooling stacks of nuclear power plants can trigger small storms.

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Helicoper lightning - Investigators looking into a lightning strike that brought down a helicopter recently reached a startling conclusion: the chopper’s rotor blades may have actually caused the event.

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Snow thunder - Thunder doesn't only happen when it's raining. Intense bands of snow can develop during blizzards and lake effect snow events in much the same way that a regular thunderstorm would form when it's warm out.

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Snow wonder - These strong bands can produce lightning and loud cracks of thunder all while dumping copious amounts of snow in a short period of time.

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