Australia Weather News

Text messages that are supposed to warn Brisbane residents of incoming destructive storms were sent out too late on the weekend due to a technical fault.

Most of the 133,000 people signed up for the early warning service received the alerts after the first cell hit Brisbane on Saturday afternoon.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issued more than a dozen warnings about the two storms that swept through southern Queensland before council's early warning system sent out its first message.

Company Weatherzone, which monitors the BOM reports, is contracted by council to provide subscribers with texts, emails or voice messages to a landline.

In a statement, the council said Weatherzone had a technical problem which delayed the sending of SMS alerts on Saturday afternoon.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said he wanted a full report into the matter.

"This is an important service in the system," he said.

"That's why I'm taking it extremely seriously and I won't be resting until I've got all the answers and am satisfied with some pilot runs."

He said the issue was discussed at this morning's council meeting.

"We have to get it right," he said.

"We're coming into the more severe storms around later December, January and we need to make sure that things are sorted with the new entity."

Cr Quirk said there had been a previous situation where the company sent out too many reports.

Nevertheless he still encouraged locals to sign up to the service.

"We certainly encourage people to sign up for it … but we will not allow a day further to go without getting this matter sorted," he said.