Lightning over Sydney Harbour on January 15, 2025.
© X/@JarvFromOzLightning over Sydney Harbour on January 15, 2025.
The New South Wales State Emergency Services (NSW SES) has responded to more than 7,000 storm-related incidents across the state since Wednesday morning, as fierce storms battered large swathes of Australia's east.

Wild weather is expected to continue through the weekend, with ongoing thunderstorms on the east coast and a tropical cyclone developing just off the coast of Western Australia (WA), threatening gale force winds from Port Hedland to Exmouth in the state's northwest. Meanwhile, large areas of Queensland and WA are experiencing a severe heatwave.

With heavy rainfall expected for much of the NSW coast, numerous flood warnings have been issued. North of Newcastle, Ferndale Caravan Park residents were told to evacuate this morning due to the risk of flooding.

Wednesday's severe weather was the result of a cold front "that triggered a massive line of storms... At one stage we basically had a line of storms extending from almost the Queensland border down to Tasmania," meteorologist Christie Johnson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). That represents a staggering storm front spanning more than 1,500 kilometres.


An 80-year-old man was killed on Wednesday when a tree fell on his car in Cowra, 240 kilometres (km) inland in Central West NSW. The same day, four people were injured in Wagga Wagga in southern NSW, when a demountable hut upturned in the strong winds.

Weatherzone detected an incredible 1.819 million lightning strikes from Queensland to Tasmania in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. Thursday. Between midday and midnight on Wednesday, 73,700 strikes were detected within a 100 km radius of the Sydney CBD.

Fallen trees and downed powerlines impacted electricity supply to around 200,000 homes in the Illawarra, Sydney and Hunter regions on Wednesday evening. While most connections have since been restored, further severe weather yesterday resulted in another 68,000 outages. As of this morning, around 28,000 homes are without power in Sydney and a further 15,000 in Newcastle and the Hunter.

In Sydney, where social media showed astonishing footage of numerous and sustained lightning bolts across the city skyline, Crown Casino at Barangaroo was hit by lightning which punctured the roof, allowing heavy rain to enter the building.

The wild weather ripped the roof off a house in Carlingford, in Sydney's northwest, which then smashed into the house next door. Fourteen people in that suburb were forced to find temporary accommodation because their homes were damaged by the storm.

Fires erupted in Mudgee, Central West NSW, when a house was hit by a power line and completely destroyed, and in Dubbo, where lightning struck a tree and ignited a leaking gas pipe.

Wind gusts of over 100 km/h were recorded across the storm front, including at Sydney Airport, with the highest reaching 120 km/h in Williamtown, near Newcastle and Trangie, in the Central West.

The storms dumped massive amounts of rain in some regions, with the highest fall recorded at Eurobadalla on the South Coast, 127 millimetres (mm) in 24 hours. The rain dumps have caused flash flooding and leaking roofs, putting more strain on underfunded emergency services.

At lunchtime on Thursday, the NSW SES issued a warning to residents between Tweed Heads and Nimbin, in the state's Northern Rivers region, to stay indoors, due to expected damaging winds and "large to giant" hailstones.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has issued flood warnings from Coffs Coast to Newcastle, an area spanning 400 km, warning school holiday campers not to camp next to rivers.

Prior to the development of the cold front responsible for the storms, the BOM website was warning of a heatwave in NSW from January 13 to 16, but this was cancelled on January 15 due to the shift in weather patterns, indicating how quickly conditions changed.