Thunderstorms pummelled southeast QLD with heavy rain and prolific lightning on Thursday night.

A flurry of thunderstorms rumbled across southeast QLD from Thursday afternoon and into the evening as a moisture-laden and unstable air mass passed over the region ahead of a low pressure trough.

While the storms started to develop over the state's southeast inland on Thursday afternoon, they drifted towards the east and manages to reach the coast.

Some of yesterday's eastward-moving storm cells got a boost when they encountered a sea breeze front. This occurs when relatively cool and dense air flowing over the coast from the Coral Sea undercuts a warmer air mass approaching from the west, causing the warm inland air mass to rise. In yesterday's case, this rising air at the sea breeze front caused acted to supercharge the existing thunderstorms, resulting in heavy rain and a lot of lightning.

During the 12 hours ending at midnight last night, there were 352,311 lightning strikes detected within a 300 km radius of Brisbane. More than 200,000 of these occurred between 4pm and 10pm, which is shown on the map below.

Image: The locations of 209,703 lightning strikes detected within a 300 km radius of Brisbane between 4pm and 10pm AEST on Thursday, December 9. This includes both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning.

The heaviest rain from last night’s storms fell to the north of Brisbane, where Deception Bay collected 114 mm during the 24 hours to 9am on Friday, with 112 of this falling during the six hours ending at midnight.

Albany Creek also picked up 101 mm and Dayboro had 111 mm during the 24 hours to 9am Friday.

According to the ABC, a woman died after her car was swept into a suburban creek in Apsley in Brisbane's north during Thursday night's storms.