Farmers in central and northern Victoria are assessing broken windows, flattened crops and damaged driveways today after a storm passed through the area late yesterday.
Key points:
- Central Victorian farmers were hit by a hail storm on Monday afternoon
- Crops, trees and houses have been damaged
- 70 millimeters of rain was recorded in an hour-and-a-half
The front dumped as much as 70 millimeters of rain in some areas, accompanied by golf-ball-sized hail.
At Wee Wee Rup between Cohuna and Leitchville, four out of the five houses on Jodie Hay’s dairy farm were damaged.
“The cladding has big holes punched in it, our windows are broken, sky lights are broken,” Ms Hay said.
“Probably the most devastating thing for us is we’ve got a maize crop in and about 40 hectares of that now looks like it’s had a shredder through it.
“It was fairly frightening. We’ve got 150 hectares of grain that’s not yet harvested, so it’s pretty devastating but that’s farming I guess, isn’t it?”
Ms Hay said the storm lasted about 15 minutes and also claimed 40 willow trees in front of her property.
“It looks like we’ve been in there with an excavator.
“It came in around 7pm and … the noise was amazing. It went really dark, then the wind, then the hail stones started and we kind of just held our breath and had to wait for it to finish.”
Tropical feeling
Further south at Durham Ox, Drew Chislett “just knew something was going to happen”.
“It was so tropical,” Mr. Chislett said.
“You’ve got the whole Queensland feel minus the sand and the beach. You could just tell something was building.
“We ended up catching the front of it and [driving] between Boort and Durham Ox a lot of branches were blowing across the road and then we got home at Durham Ox and they’d been hit quite hard really.”
Mr Chislett said trees had been pushed over and any crops in the area that had not been harvested would be shredded.
“If you had a car outside the storm was giving it a bit of grief,” he said.
‘Worst storm I’ve ever seen’
Norm Brooks was surprised the damage was confined to his driveway at Glengower near Clunes, despite recording 70 millimeters of rain in an hour-and-a-half.
He said the hail was “the size of a tom bowler marble”.
“It was the worst I’ve seen and I’ve lived here since December 1974,” Mr. Brooks said.
“Most people around here I’ve spoken to have said the same thing.
“It was rather amazing really. The noise on the shed roof was horrendous.
“I was talking to my brother and … driving back to Clunes he was worried the hail stones were going to smash his windscreen!
“Everything was underwater no matter where you walked you were walking in water.”
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