What an afternoon!
We saw the storm coming on the BOM radar, so took off from Bacchus Marsh to visit children over in Knox to beat the storm. We got ahead of it but checked out the radar when we got there and saw that it was pointed at us. Bit of rain coming here, I thought. A bit of thunder and lightning and than incredible whacks on the roof started. I saw a few stones at about 2-3cm, but they grew and grew. We had three cars outside and no opportunity to get them under cover. Huge hailstones - much the same as in David's pics. We braved the deluge to collect some and my son has pics. I'll get them and post. 7cm dia was the biggest and many around 6cm.
Inspected the damage after the storm abated. We were lucky it wasn't worse. Three cars significantly dented. Not worth repairing. Two major cracks in one windscreen - will have to be replaced. House seemed OK except the plastic sheeting on the rear pegola - I counted 23 holes! Also two holes in plastic sheeting which allows light into garage. I inspected more closely later - no tile damage and the three skylights were undamaged. However my daughter called me later to report water dripping through lounge room ceiling. Not sure how that happened. I've asked her to monitor it through the next few days rain and report.
Neighbour was up later replacing several broken tiles on their roof.
However we headed over to a friends in Rowville. The whole suburb was hit hard. Lots of flooding and some streets were cms deep in shredded leaf litter. Serveral cars showing broken glass. Our friends had cars severely dented - probably several times worse than ours. One lost the back windscreen. Front windows of the house were taken out by hailstones which were found in the far corner of the room. Water flooded into the house when gutters were blocked with
hail. Lawn was completely covered in
hail. I shovelled 6" of
hail away from the garage door. But they had just had new skylights put in. The
hail went straight through the upper plastic and, in the big skylight, when straight through the ceiling plastic diffuser as well. The lady of the household was struck by
hail in the middle of her dining room
We helped with the clean up and cleared the gutters and covered the broken skylights. Not much else could be done. Front room with glass splinters to be picked up. Almost brand new car looking as dimpled as a golfball!
Never seen
hail this size in my life. I've had several cars go through
hail storms before without damage. Seems my time had come.
Many others have undoubtedly suffered much worse. Good luck with the insurance claims.
