Canberra Australia bombarded with damaging hail storm the size of golf balls
Golf ball-sized hail is shown at Parliament House on Monday. Picture: Getty
Australia’s fatal summer of fire became one of icy demolition, as severe weather swept across the eastern states on Monday.
Hailstones the size of golf balls bombarded Canberra, turning day to night as it pummelled Parliament House and other national institutions, before carving a trail of destruction all the way to the NSW coast.
Car windows were smashed and holes were pierced through office roofs, leaving two people injured.
In Victoria, fire-ravaged townships were issued with urgent flood warnings, NSW’s drought-starved centre and northwest were plagued by billowing dust storms, and on Queensland’s Gold Coast residents were told to brace for further flash floods.
In the NSW Blue Mountains, a 16-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man were struck by lightning near the Three Sisters lookout in Katoomba and rushed to hospital with burns.
Behind all the chaos, the ever-present threat of returning bushfires loomed large as the deadly season of devastation continues.
Canberra was hardest hit by Monday’s freak hailstorm, with locals stuck on insurance hotlines while others helped each other with their vehicles.
By 6pm, the ACT Emergency Services Agency had received more than 1750 calls for assistance from the severe storm activity and emergency services personnel worked through the night to respond to roof and window damage, fallen trees and electrical hazards.
Eleanor Goodwin, a 40-year-old librarian, rushed out of Canberra’s Treasury building to find her family car smashed and confused drivers trying to patch up what was left of their vehicles.
People were using Glad Wrap and sticky tape to cobble mirrors and things back together,” Ms Goodwin said. “Someone very kindly lent me some. It’s a six-year-old car — the back window is completely smashed, both mirrors are off, the front window is badly cracked, and every panel has a huge dent.
“I phoned the insurance people but there is now an automated message saying people hit by the storm should lodge online. I’ve put in a claim, but it may end up a total write-off. I have lived in Canberra all my life and I have never seen anything like it.”
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Parliament House was at the centre of the storm and the lawns were snowy white with ice despite it being the middle of January.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr was among those personally affected by the hailstorm. “My car copped a golf ball-sized hailstone and thousands of others fared even worse,” Mr Barr tweeted.
“It will take a while to clear all this up and there may be more storms tonight.”
Insurance groups on Tuesday were unable to say how many claims they had received or how much money they might have to pay out, but the bill could hit the millions. Almost 3000 insurance claims were filed for a hailstorm in Melbourne last week but the Insurance Council said many more were expected from Canberra’s storm on Monday.
Abrar Shabren, from the Bureau of Meteorology, said the areas that saw the most hail were east of Wagga Wagga, around the ACT and in southwestern Sydney.
“We saw hailstones about 4.5cm in diameter — about the size of a golf ball — fall in the southwest areas of Sydney like Campbelltown,” he said. “We have also had multiple reports of hailstones the size of tennis balls but we have been unable to confirm them.”
Mr Shabren said the BOM had issued two severe thunderstorm warnings encompassing NSW’s east coast from Wollongong, south of Sydney, to Lismore, in the state’s northeast.
The storms that brought the barrage of hail also delivered yet another day of welcome rain to fire-affected areas on the south coast with Bendethera near Moruya recording 41.2mm between 9am and 5pm on Monday.
“Areas around Bega and Shoalhaven also got a decent amount of rain, about 20mm and Nowra got even more than that with Bumbulla seeing 32mm,” Mr Shabren said. “However the northern areas of the state saw more isolated rainfall, reaching about 20mm in areas north of Lismore and near Glen Innes.”
Both NSW SES and the BOM anticipate that conditions will ease tomorrow as storm systems move out to sea, although a return to wet and windy weather is forecast for the end of the week.
NSW Rural Fire Service inspector Ben Shepherd warned that the rain had not brought the bushfire crisis to an end.
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