(click on each image for an enlarged view)

During the afternoon of Thursday the 21st of December, a group of thunderstorms moved across Victoria, causing a lot of damage to Melbourne and its surrounds.  There were also some reports of tornadoes to the north, in Romsey.

Simon (my chasing buddy) and I happened to be chasing around the northern outskirts of Melbourne, around the Epping/Craigieburn area.  During the drive from my place in Donvale, we could see a few cells off the the south west, west and north west.  One was getting fairly close to my location, and as we got onto the Hume Highway at Campbellfield, heading north, it really hit.  The rain was fairly heavy, but the winds were incredible.  The storm was fairly high based, and we noticed a few microbursts from it towards the Craigieburn area.  

We turned off the Hume at Somerton Rd, and headed west.  The storm was tracking SSE.  I wanted to get in behind it, so we turned and headed north on Mickleham Rd and then east onto Mt. Ridley Rd.  

At this time, I noticed a few trees down along Mt. Ridley Rd.

By the time we got up onto Mt. Ridley (a great little lookout point), it had already passed over and was heading towards the east.

It was then that I noticed an SES team working in the street below Mt. Ridley Rd.

We drove down and talked to the guys.  It turned out that the owner of the house was the one of the SES volunteers!  The house was located in a new housing estate.  According to him, the storm had hit at approximately 15:38.  He was home at the time, and said that as the storm arrived, the winds picked up a fair bit, but during it they became very strong indeed.  Some of his roof tiles were removed and some had smashed through the ceiling into the house, allowing water to enter and damage walls, floors and furniture.  His metal roller door on the garage (facing north), had been blown in and buckled under the force of the winds.  It wasn't an overly large door either.  His fences had also been pushed over slightly, with some palings being removed.  The fence was facing west.  He also had several boxes of rubbish sitting in the front yard, some of which he tells me were fairly heavy, which had totally disappeared.  

We then moved on to see what other damage had been caused.  The SES had received a report of downed power lines and trees in Craigieburn.

The next block over we discovered rubbish littering the streets, some of which had been already cleaned up by disgruntled residents of the under-construction housing estate.  

We also noticed rubbish in trees along the streets (perhaps remnants of the boxes?)

We then moved on further up the street, where another house was missing roof tiles,

and this storage yard for construction equipment was obliterated.

At the entrance to the Mt. Ridley estate, flags had been shredded by the fierce winds,

and a few smaller trees had been pushed over

We drove out of the estate and along a connecting road to the Hume highway.  There were a lot of trees down here, some with trunks up to 1/2 metre in diameter just snapped. 

Once out onto the Hume highway, there were several very large gum trees that had branches removed and even snapped/pushed over

We headed into Craigieburn to see what damage had been caused there.  A lot of houses had slight roof damage, mainly on the outskirts, but there were a lot of fallen branches/trees over the whole suburb.  Several spots had power lines down.

The damage path seemed to be about 4-5km wide (possibly wider) and frequent with microburst/downburst activity.  There was no evidence of tornadic damage, as the trees all fell in a SSE direction, indicating winds coming from the NNW.

Local Damage Map

Rough Map of the storm's path (click to enlarge)

There were a lot of other areas with damage right across the Melbourne metro area.  Heavy rain and small hail was also reported.  Wind speeds in the Craigieburn area seemed to be in excess of 100km/h, possibly up to 130km/h.

Thanks to:

Simon Borg, Andrew Elliot & Tony Torcasio (SES)