It got a bit wet today....

[MarkCDodd]

We just had the worst storm I can ever remember.

It only lasted 30 minutes but has broke three windows and a sunroof at my house, dented the car something horrible, ripped the roof off the neighbour's garage (she is a lovely old Japanese lady and her husband died a little while ago. She was terrified).

Here is one of the main streets in Melbourne. There were over 100,000 people in the City for our Moomba festival. The roof collapsed at one of the main train stations and two others were flooded.

http://img94.yfrog.com/i/mnc.mp4/

Just got a call from my Borther In Law that a huge gum tree has fallen on his house....

[Maths girl]

It looks and sounds horrific -- can you tell me what a Moomba festival is as I have never heard of that one.

[MarkCDodd]

Moomba is an aboriginal word and means "Get togethr and have fun".

Its like one huge street party.

[Jackienock]

I've had an email from a friend in Brisbane this morning, very bad there too. A tiny stream at the bottom of her garden looks like a river.
Jackienock

[grangers14]

Oh goodness me!
Looks terrible.
Hope your brother is ok.
Hope you all stay safe!
Jo

[dianel]

I was in the centre of the city when the storm struck. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, it suddenly became very dark - almost like night. There was torrential rain and the wind was so strong that the rain and the leaves on the trees were quite horizontal. Then the hail started. Great lumps of ice the size of golf-balls crashed down and piled up into heaps a foot deep. As I drove home (eventually - through flooded roads), I saw roads absolutely covered in a mush of shredded leaves.

At home my husband told me that he had seen several hailstones the size of cricket-balls in our garden.

I'm so sorry you had so much damage, Mark. I think I was very lucky not to be on the road at the time, and to have had my car under cover. Also, although we had a minor flood inside the house, we had no other damage at all.

Amazing that only 2 hours earlier, I had been sitting by the river-bank, having lunch, in hot sun. Ah, Melbourne!

[MarkCDodd]

We are at the foot of the Dandenongs and the storm just decided it was too much effort to drag itself over the mountains.

So Boronia, Upwey, The Basin and Ferntree Gully copped it real bad as it just dumped the biggest of the hailstones.

I was in Melbourne back in the 1970's when a bad storm hit and cars floated down Collins Street. This was ten times worse.

Brother In Laws house is OK. The tree didn't have far to fall (It is a two story) so hadn't picked up much momentum. It was just kind of leaning against the house.

Scary bit was watching him and others climb over it with chainsaws.

Local S.E.S came fairly quickly to put tarps over the neighbours garage. My house is a bit high for me to feel comfortable climbing the roof so we will wait for experts to arrive and have a look tommorow.

Bit of a wait for car windscreens as well.

I wish I had taken video of my dogs playing chasey just after the storm. They thought it was great running around the garden as fast as they could andlosing control around the corners on all the ice.

[MarkCDodd]

My brother just rang. He was away fishing up north yesterday and got home early this morning.

His car is destroyed. It has so many dents in it and both the front and back windows were smashed and it filled with water from overflow from the gutters.

His new 50 inch TV and home theatre was drenched in water after part of his roof caved in.

He counted 9 dead birds in his front yard, killed by the hail.

[dianel]

I can hear the hail-guns going off in the orchards nearby, and it's got darker all of a sudden. Looks like there's another lot on the way, Mark. Batten down the hatches.

It looks to be not nearly as bad as yesterday, though. On the radar, the red and orange bits are fading and heading more to the west of us.
Di

[Maths girl]

Take care of yourselves --

[MarkCDodd]

Looks like the mountains helped this time.

Northern Suburbs copped it this time around.

That shoul dbe the last of it.

[mallosa]

Phew! let's hope so Mark and Di

[dianel]

All calm again now. Amazing weather! We're used to hearing of storms like this in Brisbane and Sydney, but not in Melbourne. This was more like a tropical thunderstorm (or a series of them). I heard a weather bureau bloke saying that today was the 80th day with a maximum over 20 for Melbourne - not a bad summer!

Hope all is well at your place now, Mark. I live on the other side of Mount Dandenong and I think it must have protected us. Although we had some huge hailstones, there were not a lot of them - Not like in the city, where it looked like snow. Brian put some of the smaller hailstones in the freezer to show me when I got home and they are this big!

x------------------x