The local baker and his father were at the bakery getting ready for the Sunday morning bake when the storm hit.  The baker said his fathers side mirrors on his car were smashed and hail, up to the size of $1 coins, was piled up against the front window of the shop to about 6 inches deep.

A local family was cutting up one of the fallen trees for firewood.  I asked about their experience.  The man said that the storm only lasted about 15minutes but he said it was pretty strong.  He said they has some tree damage at their property about 1km S of Whittlesea.

A service station attendant said he was out of town for the night but his parents house had been damaged with fibreglass roofing holed and cracked from the hail which was as big as golfballs.  He also said that his brother had lost his colourbond fence which had blown away.

Another service station attendant said that Wallan had copped it just as bad as Whittlesea, if not worse.  He had seen two cars which had partially caved in roofs from tree branches falling on them and he'd also seen numerous cars full of dents from the hail.  He also mentioned that the local school had a few windows broken by the hail.

My cousins car requires panel beating/filling on all panels after she was on her way home on Saturday night (to Kinglake) and drove through the storm near Whittlesea.  The car was pounded by 4cm hail.

Tree damage was quite widespread from about 5km S of Whittlesea all the way up into Whittlesea itself.  Given the tree damage in Whittlesea and to the S I would suggest that wind gusts peaked at about 120km/h.  Whole trees were uprooted to the S of Whittlesea and large gums were snapped off.  In Whittlesea itself, there was less severe tree damage, more indicative of winds of up to 100km/h.  When combined with 3-4cm (and maybe slightly large) hail, it sure makes a mess - leaves, twigs and small branches were strewn across every road in the area.  It was quite clear that this was straight line wind damage.

The hailstorm seemed to cut a swathe from Wallan through to Whittlesea and Yan Yean on to Arthur's Creek before weakening somewhat over the Yarra Valley.

..now for the emotional first version of the report.......

OK - Put it this way....I chased and drove 990km today.....and here is the report for the first 830km......nothing....


But as for the last 160km!!!!!!! WHOLLY ****!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


THIS WAS THE BEST OVERNIGHT STORM OUTBREAK I HAVE SEEN SINCE OCT 18th 2000 - ACTUALLY NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT....THIS WAS HEAPS BETTER THAN THAT!!.

I first saw lightning to my DISTANT SW from about Tocumwal and it was relatively infrequent (maybe 1 every 10 seconds at absolute best) until I got to the servo on the Hume Hwy near Seymour. A quick suck on the good old ULP and the car was ready for REAL (read Victorian and not NSW) action. As soon as I left the servo it went BERSERK!!!! Since about 11:30pm there has
been strobe (AND I MEAN STROBE AS IN UP TO 5 FLASHES PER SECOND!!!!) lightning. The cold upper air interacted with the warm NE'ly flow and BANG!!!!!!!! BIG BIG BIG BANG!!!!! Cells were visually VERY VERY strong with powerful updrafts and very good inflow/outflow organisation. Visually they looked severe. I watched as the first "warned" cell tracked down across the
N and NE suburbs of Melbourne from a lookout near Wandong getting about 30 mins of video as the cell cruised about 10km to my S (maybe a tad less). I then gave chase down to Kalkallo where I realised there was more coming down from the NW so I stopped and watched that stuff head for me. I then headed for South Morang where I knew there was a good lookout near the top of a hill (thinking FLANGS for the video of course). I didn't make it to the lookout before the car was enveloped in hail fog and the road was almost totally covered (but for the car tyre tracks). I pulled over (well - kinda slid) off the road and jumped out to find a dense cover (drifts of 2 inches) hail up to about 1.2cm. WHOA!!!!!! I WAS IN HAIL HEAVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After some video of that (with the ominous reminder, in the form of thunder, from the approaching next storm) I headed to my original destination (the lookout in South Morang). Again I didn't make it that far as the hail on the road (and the leaf/other debris) got thicker and thicker until there was no more road....hehe - fun to drive on. I pulled over again and the hail was now in drifts of 3-4inches deep with fast rivers of hail/water/ice running down the sides of the road (all this from the first cell to pass over the NE burbs). The stones were a little larger too (1.5cm) so given the increase I gave the BoM a quick call and reported the hail. Anyway - upon finally reaching my destination (the lookout) the storm to my NW was only about 5km away and booming constantly with thunder. There was still hail everywhere at the lookout so I grabbed the torch and went in search of larger hail - and found it quite easily. Hail up to 2.5-3cm. I was now VERY VERY happy. Anyway - the cell to the NW was spitting out some f'unbelievable CG's so I jumped in the car and started videoing to the NW. I got about 10 (guessing) relatively close CG's before I decided to climb back into the front seat and start shooting towards the top of the hill (about 80-100m away). A few close CG's hit off to the SE and also over just behind the hill (all within about 500m) and then it happened. FLAASSSSSHHHHHHH (picture seeing 3 forked lightning very very very close right in front of you)
CCCRRRRRRRAACCCCCCCCCCKKKKKBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well....I totally lost it....hehehe. The MMMAAAACCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAAAa cry went out and it was just all over the shop (for those of you who don't know its just a figure of speech when one gets rather excited). I recovered from that incident (my heart rate went back down from about 20,000bpm) and decided to drive over the hill to watch the storm as it tore off to the SE. Over the hill I go and hello boys....the police are there. The road to Whittlesea was closed due to trees down. (note there was still copious amounts of hail here too - up to 2cm - not bad for 30mins after the storm). I parked the car, armed myself with the video camera and marched on down to the roadblock and introduced myself as being a member of ASWA to which I was greeted with great enthusiasm. The two cops were very friendly and were happy for me to stroll around taking footage of the 2.5ft diameter tree which had just casually been snapped off by the wind and laid nicely across half of the road. The SES was about 80m further down the road removing another WHOLE tree off the road. After about 15 mins they came down to the other tree and one of the cops and I and the two SES guys set to work on this beast. I asked them if they had heard of any other damage and they said there were buildings damaged in Whittlesea. After a while when most of the work was done I headed, off to get some more footage (hoping to catch the line of storms again...hehehe). I got up to the lookout at Kangaroo Ground and realised
things were disappearing off into the abyss of the E ranges and immediately decided enough was enough. At 3:30am it was time to head home. So I turned around and left the storm to flash away at about 1-2 flashes per second and came home. And here I am - far far far too excited to sleep so I think I'll go and watch the footage from tonight....hehe.

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