Bit of an adventure...

[reynardo]

It all started when I was heading for a house to look at in Preston, and saw a HUGE smoke cloud to the south. Some rapid triangulation showed it was on Sydney Road at Brunswick, and as I wanted to head for a certain cake shop there, I took a quick peek. Realised I couldn't get through on Sydney Road, so took this pic and then detoured around.





Actually, first of all it got dark. It was 2:30 in the afternoon on what had been a lovely Autumn day, and it was so dark that all the cars needed their lights on. This was a combination of the smoke cloud (thick, black and smelling of burned nylon) and the incredibly black rain cloud heading over...



I was just parking the car when the rain started bucketing. I had just located the umbrella when there was this rather ominous banging on the roof. And that's when I noticed that there was hail outside, and it was about an inch across. I felt at this point that staying in the car for a few minutes might be a really good idea.

Ten minutes later the hail had ceased (although you could hear local car alarms being set off from time to time by the impacts). I grabbed the umbrella and made a damp dash for cover, being pretty sure I didn't want to drive until the weather had cleared a little. Alas, I got soaked.

One nice cup of coffee later, I realised it wasn't going to get better, and I'd best make a break for home. Alas. I tried to make my way to King Street to get on the Monash. The almost complete lack of movement in the traffic told me I might be stuck in town a while longer. (It was about 4pm by this time).



These are the County Law Court steps (I think). The road from the markets to La Trobe street was completely carpeted with leaves ripped form the trees, and a cafe opposite the High Court had all the fluorescent tubes on its name display ripped off and smashed. In places the drifts of hail were a foot deep, and I realised that I'd actually only caught the edge of it.

By this time I'd been in touch with Geoffrey and he'd told me about the hail at home - up to 2 inches across :-P I'd rung silverblue and I hope they were able to cover their car as well. Alas, being a long weekend, most of the local commercial radio stations had a pre-recorded program with non-specific "sports news" flashes at the hour, which meant it was only at 4pm that I discovered that the road home was going to be rather soggy. (I shall be having some rather pointed words with them about that).


This poor shop in King Street had lost its awning too. Weather warnings were coming in about another front (we ended up with three and there will be a few more tonight) and a strong warning to get off the road if you could. I considered this excellent advice, and scarpered (slowly) off to Lonsdale St to some undercover parking and some nice hot dumplings.



I fear this car had really copped it far worse than I had. If I'd been parked at home, though, our car may well have ended up like this.



I headed for home at about 5:30. The road towards Citylink that goes past the Rod Laver was horribly slow, and I was worried that the whole Monash would be as bad, but it turned out to be because there was a large patch of water on the road. Only about a foot deep, but enough to slow everyone right down. Whole branches were off the trees, though, and all the tents that had been set up for Moomba were toppling or torn or just covered in leaves.

Geoffrey had sent me a photo of the hail stones from the backyard, and saved a bundle for me to see. This is one of the more spherical hailstones.




This is one of the larger stones, which had a very distinctive halo effect through it. This is the layering caused by the formation of the stones as they were bounced up and down in the cloud layers. Although the scale has flared out in this pic, I managed to measure the width as 42.5mm.

I got home, had a lovely hot shower and then collapsed. And really should have gone to bed some hours ago.

Luckily we didn't lose power, although sly_girl did for quite some time. I hope no-one got more than damp.

Comments

[naturalredhead.livejournal.com]

That's odd. You guys got massive hail. We got no hail at all. Plenty of rain though.

[sootysmudge.livejournal.com]

Yep you're right the photo you took is of the County Court (I work near there).. many thanks for the picture. I consider that my suburb got off lightly compared to the CBD.

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

Meteorology ~ such an exact science!

We were supposed to be stormed on yesterday, all we got was sticky humidity & a couple of impressive C. Nimbi which over-promised & definitely under-delivered.

I'm glad your story was exciting, but with no real casualties or property damage...

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

ACK! You're both okay?

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Both fine, both had the sense to hide away from the worst of it. Wet is acceptable.

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

The dance company running the camp I was in Victoria for over the weekend had ankle deep water on all their dance floors, thanks to the roof and skylights not being up to handling the hail and then that accumulated hail melting. Too early to know whether the new, $70,000 perfectly sprung floor they installed less than a month ago is going to warp from the water the concrete underneath may have absorbed.

Some of the classes at the campsite had to be rearranged as teachers got delayed getting there or went back to Melbourne to survey the damage and organise cleanup.