my in laws have places near Torrevieja just south of Alicante. one day last May i was at in 30 degrees of sun. 30 minutes later had a violent thunderstorm and hail the size of 10p pieces. and the locals were sratching their heads
Interesting to hear your story. The weather goes from one extreme to another in next to no time. The locals here are amazed at the general changes in weather patterns. When we first arrived, everyone would say at rainstorms "I've never seen anything like it". It seemed to happen so often that in the end I just used to scoff. But these days I'm inclined to agree. 'Erratic' doesn't do it justice.
There was one storm in which the hailstones cracked our car windscreen and headlights (hard to believe given their position) and dinged the bonnet. Repairing all the damage would have cost more than the car was worth. For the locals, the damage was even worse. This isn't a terribly cash rich economy (a lot of people own their homes, as they've been in the family for generations, but the farmers don't make very much money from agriculture and there are also lots of elderly folk getting state pensions but nothing else), so to lose their vegetable patches was a disaster as they now needed to spend money on food. Plus they lost their almond harvest and there was quite a lot of damage to the olive trees and vines.
There was another storm during which 60 litres per square metre (6 cm) fell in 45 minutes. At one point, being outside was like walking underwater. Our land is regularly flooded and our valley looks more like a river when that happens, but fortunately it subsides in a day or so (it drains into a lower valley). The rain this September ruined the grape harvest: fungal problems, split grapes, pickers couldn't get on to the land for mud, etc. I don't have a plane to get flipped over by wind, but I understand how the people in Brisbane must feel.
I've just edited my earlier post to update the weather forecast, which I guess you won't have seen: 152 litres (and probably more in our case) per square metre between today (Friday) and Monday.