What a day!(Some Pics Added Further Down the Page)

Well it's summer here and around this time is the 'storm season' where we get more storms than usual . Well today when in the middle of eating my lunch, all of a sudden the moderately grey sky was hiding a disaster. Within a minute rain came down by the bucketloads and i thought it was nothing unusual. There have been storms around in NSW but nothing too severe in my area although people have been killed in other parts.

So it's raining then all of a sudden boom, a 8cm in diameter chunk of hail came and landed in the backyard! I immediately had to run outside to assist in getting our sports car in the garage as the other car was already in there. This hail was bloody huge! It was varying in size from 5cm-8cms in diameter and just pelting down. We got the car in ok and luckily not a single dint but the rest of the street werent so lucky. I barely was able to make it outside, i had to use something near me as a shield the hail was so thick, strong and fast paced. There was massive bangs everywhere, it was total unseen chaos. The pool had hail pelting down it looked like waves! Trees were blowing out of control not to mention thunder and lightning around. Eventually 20mins later it settled and went but that 20mins was enough.

Everyone in the street was outside wondering what on earth just happenned. It was one of the worst things we have seen here and thats how many people described it too. The street was looking like a disaster zone. Almsot every house had a tile or numerous tiles on the roof broken, cracked or smashed. A car across the street had 10 6cm holes in the back windscreen from hail that burst through it. Because of how sudden it was many coudlnt prepare. My next door neighbour had friends over with about 4 cars in the street which are all likely to be written off due to the very costly dints and damage from the hail. Some windscreens smashed, dinted cars, branches and leaves everywhere, broken roof tiles...it was a disaster zone.

My nextdoor neighbour and their friends had to be outside covering the cars with towels and so on to protect them but to no avail. People were getting hit by these enormous bits of hail too. My next door neighbour had a proper plastic like material covering which has been smashed with enormous holes through it from the hail. The damage to cars in particular will be huge because of the cost to fix them which will lead to them being written off.

We checked to see what damage we had. Luckily the car didnt get a single dint but the house took a little bashing:
-About 12 tiles were needed on the roof
-A piece of hail pierced through these window hangover things
-Hail cracked the covering for the air conditioner piping
-Our strong pergola covering has some cracks through it, one bit of hail even pierced through knocking that bit of plastic 3m into the flyscreen!
-Dints in the ground from the hail which was so strong it actually went into the ground some down as low as 3cms or so

We didnt get off to bad unlike many others around us. When we went for a drive, about 1/2 houses had someone on the roof replacing tiles or had replaced tiles. The place was like a disaster zone really.

Here is a link to an overall article about this storm in particular which is on of many to recently hit: www.smh.com.au/news/national/storm-smashes-sydney-tea-party/2007/12/09/1197135277464.html

This is the first one which affected my area. Some are going as far as calling it a mini-cyclone in some areas. It was chaos, almost unseen before. The insurance company's are going to be flooded (no pun intended).

It dried up after it went, most hail went within an hour or so from the sun which followed the storm.



I guess to make this thread worthwhile, have you experienced anything like this?