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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
