Massive storm here yesterday - hail like large lemons!

[lisa_spyder]

Video - Herald Sun

Man we Aussies are copping the freaky weather! 80% of Queensland has been declared a flood disaster, parts of NSW haven't fared much better; over in Western Australia they've been battling bushfires...and here in Victoria we copped the brunt of a freakish weather system yesterday that caused massive widespread damage from wind, rain, hail and flooding.

Houses have been literally destroyed by the hail storm. Certain suburbs hit worse than others and the city of Melbourne really got hammered. I've been through big floods in Melbourne before when freakish Summer storms hit but nothing like this. The Victorian gallery, museum, aquarium, main city railway stations, Federation (city) square...nothing escaped the damage. The clean up bill is going to be huge.

We are an hour out of the city and we got it too. We missed the hail though - amazing as 8kms away in a neighbouring town they got hail the size of cricket balls (baseball size). But did we get rain! 40mm in about half an hour...and the wind was unbelievable. We get big blows here from time to time but this was plain scary. I was waiting for the street trees to come clean out of the ground and blow away.

Guttering on the house could not cope; walls of water falling from our roof and gushing back inside the eaves - you guessed it - we've got wet ceilings now. The kids and I were working furiously to stop the running (not dripping) water coming from the tops of the window frames in their bedrooms from doing too much damage. Workshop copped the same treatment so we were lucky Mike was there. He was drenched yet did not step outside (it was raining inside!). Lucky though as he was able to manoeuvre most things out of the way of the deluge. No customer cars damaged, no expensive equipment or tools damaged; a few bits and pieces drenched but nothing too serious. Calling insurance on both house and workshop though.

We got off really lightly. Have seen so much footage of houses destroyed; roof cave-ins from the hail and rain and homes uninhabitable. Quite a few people were injured by the hail; either getting hit by it or slipping over on the ice it formed. Lots of reports of people falling off rooves as the tried to repair the damage themselves as the emergency services were overrun.

Our town faired worse - most of the retail sector copped it badly. From what Mike has said most of the industrial area was hit too. Haven't ventured out yet to see what the farm damage is .

Worst is that it is a long weekend down here so a lot of people away from their homes and businesses. The majority are going to come back to unpleasant surprises...

[johnco]

[lisa_spyder]

Thanks John,

There's another vid kicking around of Elizabeth St (Melbourne CBD) like a raging river. Can't find it at the moment...but last time Elizabeth St suffered anything like that was 1968!!!!

The lemon sized hail fell in the suburbs and out our way...the stuff in the city was reported as being as big as golf balls and not soft and mushy but hard and compacted so they really did some damage. Lots of friends telling me their cars are trashed...

[Neilk]

Friend has a furniture store in Melbourne and they had hail come through the roof!

It even looks worse in the video. Did the storms help with your drought?

[Jim Bremner]

Originally Posted by johnco

That's a hell of a bit of water!

[Scuba Steve]

Sounds like what my parents got about 5 years ago in central Texas. Hail the size of grapefruit came down just a couple of km over from them. The stuff trashed thick clay roofing tiles and took out any cars caught up in it. My parents got lucky because it was only golf ball sized at home and they just had to get a new roof put on and clean all the debris from the trees.

Stay safe over there!

[widebody911]

The rain is so bad they're driving on the wrong side the road!

[GWN7]

First fires, now floods....what's next Locusts?

I have a friend in Melborne who's a Director at a school have to email him and see how he faired.

[mattdavis11]

That's impressive! I love stormy weather.

[pwd72s]

Lisa...good to know that you & yours are okay. Hail that size can indeed be lethal.

[Bill Douglas]

Lisa, you guys get some nutty weather. You should come to Wellington Last year while at Byron bay; Queensland was flooding and Victoria was on fire.

[fxeditor]

This is your summertime weather?! Sorry to hear about your house Lisa. Hope you guys make it through without any more flooding.

Good luck,
Michael

[lisa_spyder]

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 .

[widebody911]

Mini-cyclone, record floods hit Australia

[Buckterrier]

Glad you and yours are safe Lisa. You can blame all your, (and our), bad weather on Al Gore

Of course without big Al there would be no internet

BE SAFE

[lisa_spyder]

More from the Herald Sun today:

"UPDATE 1.08pm: INSURERS have declared Victoria's 'storm of the century' a natural catastrophe as more heavy rain sweeps across Melbourne's CBD.
cInsurers are expected to pay out well in excess of $200 million to more than 40,000 homeowners and business in the wake of the wild weekend weather, as the Insurance Council of Australia established a catastrophe taskforce and insurance hotline (1300 728 228) to handle the massive flow of claims.
A short time ago, the number of general claims from businesses and households since Saturday had doubled to 40,000. Among them include a Ferntree Gully Toyota dealer Gavin Werner whose $8m worth of stock was smashed by "cricket ball"-sized hail on Saturday.
Insurance council spokeswoman Sandra Van Dijk urged policy holders to contact their insurer to seek policy advice.
The payout is expected to be the biggest since the Victorian Bushfires that led to more than $1 billion in claims.
Yesterday, tornadoes and hail ripped through the state's north ahead of more thunderstorms and wild winds.
Shepparton residents were hit by a separate huge storm that rivalled the “storm of the century” that left a trail of destruction across Melbourne that is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and has left the SES with a massive backlog of work after 6000 calls for help..
Tornadoes, flash flooding and hailstones lashed the Goulburn Valley, causing damage to houses and vehicles, the weather bureau said today.
The northern Victorian region was hit by the severe storm about 4.30pm yesterday, triggering blocked rail lines, hundreds of SES calls for help, and cutting power to nearly 45,000 people."

The region around Shepparton is our "fruit bowl". The Goulburn Valley needs this like a hole in the head...they were hit last year too . Up go the prices of our fruit and veg again...as down go their crops and livelihood ...