Anthony's Blog

In 1999, Sydney had a hailstorm that they were speaking about for years afterwards: Houses had canvas on their roofs for ages, some cars never had their dents repaired. It caused a billion dollars worth of damage. Personally I suspected they were putting it on a bit. After all, how bad could a hailstorm be?

Well, this afternoon Melbourne had a pretty severe hailstorm. I don't imagine it was as bad as the Sydney one, but it was absolutely stunning for its ferocity.

Earlier this afternoon it suddenly got dark. Too dark to read inside. Looking across to Federation Square, the Moomba rides were lit up as though evening was setting. There were probably a thousand or two people down in Birrarung Marr and the Alexandra Gardens who were about to be seriously pelted.

In something like15 seconds it went from no rain into a heavy hailstorm: the sort with hailstones the size of golf balls. (I'd be exaggerating to say they were as big as cricket balls. I didn't see any that big.)

The Age reports that Southern Cross Station was evacuated during the storm... courtesy of that great journalistic tradition of looking out the window. (It's already obvious that moving out of the windowless Spencer Street Soviet into their new building is paying off in terms of better/faster journalism.)

As at 4pm (around an hour after the storm hit) the Southern Cross statement only appears underneath a single photograph on the front page. An article on the inside (from 3:36pm) speaks of winds of 100 km/h at Melbourne Airport, and warnings from the Weather Bureau and the SES. And they ask people to send in photos.

Update: by 4:30 they've got 13 photos from readers. The wording of the story hasn't been updated yet. (No news yet as to whether the entire roof on $300 million Southern Cross Station will need to be replaced. :-) )

Update: 5:40 The Age now has a photo of rain and hail cascading into Southern Cross following the collapse of part of the roof. When I jokingly postulated the need to replace the roof at 4:30, I was wondering whether it had been dented out of shape. It never occurred to me it might collapse. See photo.

Here are some of my photos of the storm:



Looking out whilst the hail came down.



These pots are almost a metre in from the edge of the roof line. It is rare for them to get wet, let alone fill with water.



A panorama.

Click on the photos to see them in a gallery (with multiple sizes), or click on links below to download full resolution copies.