The impact on low-lying areas caught many off-guard, including a wedding on the Gold Coast that came to an abrupt halt as a metre of water flooded through the venue.
The RACQ received 89 home insurance claims and more than 40 motor vehicle claims in the past 24 hours.
The deluge drowned cars in Coorparoo, Woolloongabba and Stones Corner as Rosalie copped 70 millimetres in just an hour, and Holland Park recorded 33 millimetres in the same period.
Chris Chambers had just sat down for his birthday at the Norman Hotel in Woollongabba when the severe weather alert was issued.
He and others inside looked on in shock when staff attempted to save cars and bins from floating away in the car park.
“The water was just torrentially coming into the carpark from the side street and it all happened very quickly,” he said.
“(Staff) were trying to push cars away from the other vehicles so they weren’t bumping into each other.”
Nine people rescued after flash flooding and storms across state
Some parts of the south-east had their wettest December day for 20 years and the Lockyer Valley further west was also drenched.
“To have that amount of rainfall falling in just that short amount of time – half an hour to an hour – definitely caused a lot of flash flooding in the area,” Meteorologist Shane Kennedy said.
Security footage at an East Brisbane garage captured how quickly the water rose from trickle to torrent in less than 20 minutes.
“All of the driveways have been built up but still it affects us on the streets, the roads, the clean-up,” Absolute Car Care’s Steve Georgas said.
At Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast, wedding celebrations came to a grinding halt when water came flooding through the luxury venue at The Acre Boomerang Farms.
“We’ve lost most of our wedding venue,” venue owner Stevie Filipovic said.
“If you see inside, most of the kitchen at the wedding venue is completely upside down, all of the furniture was completely swept away.”