No reports that our 13 year drought has broken; although the catchments have had good rainfall and will get even better runoff from this event. There is still a severe weather warning for the Alpine/Northeast region of the State today.
Snippets from today's Herald Sun newspaper:
"A beauty of a super-cell thunderstorm hits Melbourne
The lemon-sized hailstones that belted Melbourne were symptoms of a "beast" of a weather event known as a super-cell thunderstorm.
Weather experts say the hailstones were some of the biggest to hit metropolitan Melbourne in the past century.
Super-cell storms are characterised by rotating 100kmh wind updrafts which can, in extreme cases, create tornadoes.
The weather bureau's Ted Williams said Saturday's super-cell storm was caused by a westerly low pressure trough combined with warm moist air, forcing updrafts that fuelled the towering black clouds.
"All the ducks lined up. You need quite a few things to line-up (for a storm) like the one that went through Melbourne," Mr Williams said.
He said the conditions were more common in the tropics.
Kevin Parkyn, also from the weather bureau, said the history books would be revised after the weekend storms.
"March 6, 2010, will probably go down in Melbourne's history as a day in which a significant, severe thunderstorm event affected the metropolitan area," Mr Parkyn said.
He said rural Victoria had experienced massive hailstorms in recent times, but not inner Melbourne. "We have to go back many decades, it could be as far as early last century, to find an event in the metropolitan area.
"Lemon-sized hailstones in Melbourne are very rare. And we are talking large lemons, we are not talking about little green ones."
In a 30-minute period more than 45mm rain fell, with the heaviest recording in Maribyrnong.
The biggest hailstones were felt in Ferntree Gully with 10cm missiles falling from the sky. Residents around Melbourne reported widespread damage, including holes punched through car windscreens.
Southern Cross Station's roof also had holes punched in it, causing an evacuation.
Mr Parkyn said a super-cell thunderstorm was known for destructive patterns.
"(It is) an organised beast of a storm that once it gets going tends to last longer that your ordinary thunderstorm.
"It lasted for several hours and in its path created mayhem and destruction.""
GWN7 - We had the locusts
before the fires and floods. A couple of years ago the little buggers ate their way south - didn't get this far as there was a lot of work done to eradicate them (but they did a lot of damage further north)...
Matt - as destructive as the storm was it was awesome to watch...at 4.00pm the sky was so dark it could have been night. I was watching it come at us across the sky and then BAMM...it was on us.
Bill - it's been a freaky few months for weather here that's for sure. Southern Qld and North NSW down to mid coast have had lots of flooding. Parts of the Central Coast have been badly flooded several times in the last 12 months. The Southeast of the country has been in drought and our northern neighbours have been literally drenched. We need a national water policy here to handle all this water...time to seriously look at North-South pipelines on both sides of the country to harness this precious resource and use it where needed (and to minimize the damage in the areas that are getting so much rain more regularly now).
Paul - we're fine...we got off really lightly. We'll climb up in the roof today and check how waterlogged it all is...Charlotte has been at me about painting her room so I guess now will be the time as the ceiling will need doing anyway. Have to check for broken tiles and stuff too. The shed hardly leaked a drop which is great news considering all the stuff we have in there! We fitted new polycarb panels a couple of months ago as the old ones were getting a bit 'flaky' - boy am I glad we did that!
Michael - technically it is now Autumn (Fall)....but we always get late summer weather through until early April and for the last couple of weeks it has been unusually humid and sticky, so I guess this storm was the result of that.
I had my Aunts on the phone yesterday morning - Warragul made the news as we got the tornado-like conditions and they were worried about "their little girl" (me
)...on a good note they were all fine with no damage. Got to check on the rest of the family yet - hope the news is good all round.
BTW - the sun is shining here now...looks like it's going to be a lovely day
.