Hail !!

[DavidU]

Bloody hell ! hail bigger than golf balls. 1 x damaged BMW 1x damaged Porsche.

[wasyoungonce]

I saw this post & brought my cars in...thanks David. I just beat the hail by 1 min!

IIS delivers again.:thumbsup:

[DavidU]

!!!! I would say thousands of cars in Melb are wrecked.

[JethroB76]

What suburbs are you guys?

[AndrewJ]

My neighbours windows are all shattered and my car has a few more dents than prev.
That was wild.
Trees all stripped in the street ( the street is green ???? )
Hail up to cricket ball size at its peak.

Andrew

[wasyoungonce]

Lilydale. It is mostly skipping me ATM...but i hear melbourne is copping it.

I believe from the BOM site Lilydale is about to cop it in 20 mins or so from a front....

Our new Honda is ready to pick up on Tues (from Ferntree gully...where the hail was reported to be up to 10cm via BOM (http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV65752.shtml) warnings)...or maybe not...:lol:

edit:

lots of posts on this over at overclockers & whirlpool..big damage.


edit:
jeez remands me of hail storms in southern Queensland...Ipswich area

[Barrykgerdes]

Anyone that owns a BMW and a porsche should worry about the damage:lol::lol::lol:
Baz

[DavidU]

We are in Wantirna south, a mate 1km away had both his cars wrecked and windows smashed.
Never ever seen it this bad. Hail stones like this would kill someone.:eyepop:

[Allan_L]

My daughter tells me it was "raining" inside the elevator wells of her apartment.
A train was derailed across the road and The station closed
And sirens are going off like air raid sirens all over the CBD.
But she has been known to exagerate.
Maybe not this time :)
:windy:

[DavidU]

Just back from the factory, holes in the roof and totally flooded inside
Wifes car is wrecked.

[Kevnool]

Mother nature sure is powerfull dont under estimate her, Hope all is insured.
Cheers Kev.

[pgc hunter]

I was driving as it hit and the rain was extraordinary, it literally turned to night at 2:30pm and everyone on the freeway was at a standstill as the rain was so heavy, you could'nt see anything at all! Absolutely unreal.

Was driving over the high level ramp on the Westgate at Montague St when it was approaching in the distance. Incredible spectacle, corkscrewing updrafts, low level stratus getting sucked into the rotating beast, pitch black clouds accented with literally neon greenage and amazing lightning.

Tree and leaf debris everywhere and lots of flooding aswell.

Was on my way to the airport to do some plane spotting, and there was constant lighting and thunder, the airport was closed. They reopened it about half an hour I got there and positioned myself at Runway 34 to view the inbound aircraft, and these planes emerged from the cloud literally 10 seconds before touching down, and some of them made some truly hair raising manouvers to line up with the runway..some of them looked like they were going to drop right on top of me before making some crazy banking manouvers to align with the runway.

Heres some video and pics of the storms:


News article with pics: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/huge-hailstorm-strikes-melbourne/story-e6frf7jo-1225837662827

radar loop of the system: http://radar.strikeone.net.au/?fuseaction=loops.main&radar=023&numberofImages=10&dateStart=1267819200&dateFinish=1267862400

here'sa a vid of some flooding: Yfrog - mnc - Uploaded by palegoldenrod (http://img94.yfrog.com/i/mnc.mp4/)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0BwVoKNFGM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbhGsGpXNMM


Also see this forum and thread for reports and pics: http://www.theaustralianweatherforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=205&start=900



Holy snapping duck doo doo :scared::scared::scared:

This season is really delivering the goods for us, look back to 11/2/10, NYE 2010, last Saturday, and November 2009 for some impressive stormage.

[pgc hunter]

AWESOME MUST SEE PICS http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/photo-gallery/gallery-e6frf94x-1225837692013?page=2

[lacad01]

Holy smokes, sounds like the big one we had in Sydney 10 years ago :(

[DavidU]

:scared:

[bojan]

In some countries in Europe, 20 years ago existed very effective hail suppression system. It is still in place but there are some attempts to outlaw this practice (and I do not understand the reasons behind them.. because I know for sure the results were positive, being part of this during some time back in '80es)
C-band radars from WWII were used to locate the cores inside the clouds (where the ice was) then those areas were seeded with silver iodide crystals, delivered by two stage rockets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding).
Hundreds of rockets were used in each campaign.. but the damage I am seeing here in Oz almost never happened (except in areas where rocket were not fired - for example if people who were supposed to operate rocket launchers were too busy else where (in local pub, for example).
Mainly the system was established to protect crops during the summer time (July, August, September) when hail is very common.

[erick]

What an afternoon! :scared: :sadeyes: :(

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. :confused2:

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 :eyepop:

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.

[Waxing_Gibbous]

Bloody Ice.
It should stay in Space!!!!
Dave, Eric:
Commiserations. :( :( !!

Main hail falls bypassed us completely but we copped 37mm of rain in 8 minutes!
Carron had gone out to inspect the cattle-troughs when it started sheeting down. She legged it just as a huge gust of wind caused a big Cypress to split and collapse exactly where she had been standing 3 seconds before. :O
I think rain is nature's way of telling you to come in out of it, 'cuz worse is on the way!
Break out the steel brollies.

[DavidU]

Thanks Peter.
Erick, sorry to hear you got hit, really bad in our area. My wifes was at the daughters dance class in knox and several people were cut badly by large hail and required medical treatment.
My wifes car I would say is a write off, (too expensive to repair.)
By my quick calculations we copped about $200K in damage, and I bet the insurers will try to get out of it.

[erick]

There was the annual steam rally down on Ferntree Gully road. Packed with cars and people when we went past. My wife passed later in the day dropping someone home whose car wasn't driveable, and told me she saw several ambulances there. :sadeyes:

[astroron]

I am not being facetious, when I say that those porsche's must have tough windscreens:shrug:
Sorry to hear about all the hurt and damage:sadeyes:

[danielsun]

Yes, very savage today. I think that here in Taylors Lakes we got off lightly compared to the rest of Melb though it was still wild.
I couldn't believe the floods in the middle of the city!!:eyepop:
Spent most of the afternoon trying to get some lightning pics but very difficult during the day and I'm sure the weather gods were toying with me and laughing.

[DavidU]

Extreme.
Why are you modifying my posts?

[GrahamL]

Hope not to many were hurt, couple of years back a guy with a broken leg got caught out on the middle of a bridge on his crutches round here
If somone hadn't stopped and pulled him into there car he was in a lot of trouble.


Thats one plain nasty storm you guys copped
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZpjz5sD6U

[erick]

My Lancer and the Pulsar were both facing the same way, into the coming hail - it was striking directly. Pulsar gained two substantial star fractures from strikes, the Lancer has none.

[Lismore Bloke]

What a terrible storm. It is similar to the one that wrecked Lismore, but we didn't have so much torrential rain, mainly golf ball to tennis ball sized jagged hail. We were lucky and it was declared a disaster area. Our printing business had holes punched through the roof and many thousands of dollars of stock ruined. The Government was helping out and most insurance companies were excellent. Be aware of shonky operators trying to fix roofs. We had to have our work done four times before it was satisfactory. Wrecked cars were more problematic. Some poor young people had their cars seized by insurance assessors with thousands of dollars of stereo gear inside, and no chance to retrieve anything. It was a case of "give us the keys, find your own way home". Good luck everyone, I know what you're going through.

[wavelandscott]

Wow, what a storm.

Hope everyone came thorugh it with their health in tact...most everything else insurance can cover.

[erick]

Impact craters? :sadeyes:

[wasyoungonce]

I hope all you guys get thru this damage soon & retain some sanity.

I went to the new car year at Ferntree Gully....to see if the cars were damaged (aka we were due to pick up a new car on this Tues).

Suffice to say...all cars are heavily damaged! Meh ...it's only a car...people have homes that are damaged.:sadeyes:

I used to see storm/Hail cells like this in Ipswich/Gatton areas of Queensland back in the 80s. Thre build up was very tropical...hot steamy then a storm brews & breaks with major force.

Climate change anyone?

[pgc hunter]

BIG storm heading straight for the SDM headquarters! :scared:

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR493.loop.shtml#skip


Large hail and downed trees reported from this one. You can read reports here:
http://www.theaustralianweatherforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=205&start=1180

[Liz]

Amazing stuff ... and those damaging golf balls :eyepop: Saw on the news last night about it, and Flemington Race Track was all white!!
Bad impact craters Eric :sadeyes: .... the insurance bill for all those car repairs will be horendous.
More rain and storms coming ... yikes :windy:

[erick]

Won't bother with repairs. Not going to risk the insurance company saying write-off and taking it off me. Same with the other two cars. Still drive just fine!

But I'll read the policy for the Pulsar and see if I might be able to get a windscreen?

[Liz]

Looks like central Vic is copping some heavy falls, and is heading on to Melbourne. :scared2:

[wasyoungonce]

More storms on the way (http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR022.loop.shtml#skip)!

Maybe 1/2 to 1 hr out at most (http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV65756.shtml).:sadeyes:

[that_guy]

there has been no freaky weather here in tthe ghold coast

[erick]

Time to crawl under the bed?

[pgc hunter]

looks like its tracking west - the city and western suburbs are in for some fun, looks like we'll miss out here in Berwick :mad2: buuut the night is still young :D Hoping for some extreme mad sick max lightning.

Can't wait till the sun sets....

[barx1963]

Fairly heavy thunderstorm here in Colac ATM. Nothing like Melb yesterdau but very welcome to put some water back in our poor lake.

[Liz]

Yes, it looks like its drenching some very dry areas before it hits Melbourne, which is great. Some of the water catchments down there are an amazing sight ... eg Lake Eppalock and Cairn Curren - so low .. (ex Bendigo girl :))

[wasyoungonce]

Damn...you mean I built an Ark for nothing...Shee's!:lol:

[pgc hunter]

absolute fail here. No lightning at all.

Darwin has my name on it.

[erick]

Just steady rain for a few hours. Nice lightning show as well. Nothing else, thank goodness.


Attached are examples of Saturday's hail that fell in Knoxfield.

[Liz]

Wow!! Amazing Eric.... havent seeen hail in a long time.

Signing off now (with a nice white wine) to watch 'V' ;)

[Jen]

:eyepop::eyepop: wow Eric they are huge that could do a lot of damage if you got hit in the head by one of those :help: ouch sorry to hear about the cars and you too Dave

We have had fantastic rain, lightning and thunder happening for two days now, i havnt seen it rain for this long in years :thumbsup:

Well on a good note it will get rid of all the dust thats been floating around lately :)

[stephenb]

As has been said before, "Thanks goodness for golf balls, otherwise we wouldn't have anything to compare hail stones against!"

[pgc hunter]

yeah those stones are huge, the one on the very left is atleast 6cm in diameter.

Memorable day yesterday, but today however is very forgettable.

[toc]

How boring for me in Millpark - bit of rain, but no hail, and no wind. Hope its the same for tomorrow

[astroron]

Great to hear you had some rain Jen,:thumbsup:
Will they start growing Rice up the road again:question::P

[Jen]

:lol: lol Ron who knows what the rice growers will do ;):lol:

[erick]

Yep, you guessed right. I didn't check the tiles closely enough. It was wet and slippery and I was more interested in the skylights at the time. Based on what I saw on another roof, I was looking for tiles significantly displaced. Mine had just cracked through in place - lengthwise and across.

This morning in Bacchus Marsh we had the heaviest downpour around 5am. Checked the radar and saw it was heavy across Melbourne. Checked with the children and the lounge room ceiling was looking decidely unhappy. Packed tools and ladders and headed across at first light.

Found 10 broken tiles on the side of the house facing the storm front on Saturday. Several stains in ceilings and lounge room ceiling so bad Immediately poked a hole to relieve the water pressure.

Had a good stock of spare tiles so I replaced them. Annoyingly one was right under the ridge pointing so I had to dislodge that. Have poked it back in and we'll see what happens. Won't be thrilled if I have to repoint!

Since I examined every tile closely, I spotted another small break on the other side of the house where a water spot used to occasionally appear. Never have looked closely enough before.

Went down to Binnings and fought with others for the last sheets of polycarbonate sheeting - only the expensive stuff left :sadeyes:. Replaced the broken sheet in the garage roof.

So I have a corner of the lounge room ceiling to replace and a pergola roof.

That must have been a fair impact by those ice missiles. I have walked on these tiles for years and my 95+kg weight has only ever cracked one.

Still I got off easy! Insurance claims tipped to top $200m. Many small car dealers uninsured for hail are going to lose big time. Tile roofs reported to look like "cheesegraters". Many people evacuated from houses with collapsed ceilings. Docklands Stadium and Southern Cross Train Station are facing huge repair bills.

[danielsun]

Geez Eric, looks like this storm has hit you hard enough :( and how's the size of them hail stones!!! :eyepop: They would have been leathal.
Just as well no one was hit by them.
Hope you get it all back to new without too much $$$
or I hope your insurance looks after you.

[DavidU]

Sorry to hear of your misfortune Erik. I have seen many many houses & business's that have been badly affected across Rowville/Scorsby.Ftreegully.

[wasyoungonce]

Sorry to hear your trouble Erick. Hope you can get them in order soon.

Our new Honda (due to pick up today)...from Ferntree Gully ...is not more! RIP.

But I cannot lose something I didn't have so I won't mourn it's loss. A lot of people are in much more dire situation than this.

[AstralTraveller]

I just saw this and it seems appropriate.

Q: What is worse than raining cats and dogs?

A: Hailing cabs.


:lol::lol::lol:

[DavidU]

I went for a drive around yesterday and all the car dealers have ALL exposed cars badly damaged and quite a few houses with most tiled roofs badly damaged and windows smashed, it seems some of the owners are away still.

[erick]

I drove through Wantirna South checking on friends. Lots of tarps and plastic over tiles and skylights - probably every second house.

Sign has appeared on lightpole - "Roof Tiler. Prompt Service. Phone XXXXXX"

Where there's muck there's brass :)

[DavidU]

Erik, you should have called in to say hello.

[erick]

You shoulda had a big sign on your door? OK, next time I'm in the vicinity, I'll get in touch in advance! Give you a chance to go interstate before I get there :D

[Starkler]

At what size does a stone become a rock?

[pgc hunter]

personal preference I think....

[DavidU]

Hail rocks for sure.
I saw a house yesterday that had the roof smashed in so badly the roof fell into the house and through the floor:eyepop: