Wild storm hits Cloncurry, no reprieve for fire fighting graziers

It comes as an electrical storm thrashed the outback town of Cloncurry on Tuesday afternoon.

The strong but short lived cell delivered only four millimetres of rain and sparked a fire near town.

Cloncurry resident Tanya Brown said the storm appeared out of nowhere.

"The storm was really strong with gusty winds and hail," Ms Brown said.

"People are still cleaning up their yards, it caused quite a mess. There are a lot of trees uprooted and branches down.

"The storm seemed to just come out of nowhere, it was quite scary with the lightening activity starting a fire too."

Graziers around the Cloncurry region have been fighting fires for several weeks, following a number of electrical storms.

Eddie Campbell at Rosebud Station, 60 kilometres west of Cloncurry, spent his Christmas and New Year fighting fires on his 506,560 acre family property after lightening sparked two fires.

"We had fires back in October that burnt to Mount Isa, now we've lost this side of the property also," Mr Campbell said.

"I think we've lost about 70 per cent of grass to fire this season, we are really hoping for some rain now."

Jacqueline Curley at Gipsy Plains, 62 kilometres north of Cloncurry, is also hoping the monsoonal rain sets in soon, after fires ignited on New Year Eve.

"We are in a bit of a mess at the moment, I think it burnt another 10,000 acres last night, we are hoping we have it contained on two ends but it's just touch and go now," Ms Curley said.

"We've lost about 20,000 acres of country. The fires on the southern end on us bordering with Fort Constantine is out because it got rain, but this east and north eastern side didn't get any and it's just out of control.

"We did get some rain at Cotswold, thank God, so that has saved the downs country but we still need some on this red country."

Graziers may get a reprieve later this week as the Bureau of Meteorology predicts a high chance of showers from Sunday January 7.

"There are some storms forecast in the coming days but we expect them to be hit and miss in terms of rainfall," meteorologist Shane Kennedy said.

"From Sunday there is a pretty good chance of seeing a broad area of showers and thunderstorms that will slowly contract to the north east by the middle of next week."

Mr Kennedy said the onset of the monsoonal season hadn't commenced yet.

"We haven't seen the formal front of the monsoon yet," he said.

"When we are looking for the monsoonal weather we are looking for the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which is a wave of tropical weather that moves east across the equator and it's in the Indian Ocean at the moment.

"It is likely to move into the Australian region in mid-January and that will often bring a burst of the active monsoon, so it's looking good that we should see the start of the monsoon around mid-January."