Melbourne Storm

By Andrew Bolt

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

In this earlier post, I wrote of the flood damage in the State of Queensland. This major storm event in Melbourne was as a result of the remnants of this rain depression which moved to the East as well as to the South. Melbourne is around 1,000 miles to the South of those floods in Queensland. This post has a series of four short videos, all of them after the ‘read more’ link. When the first video shows images of Flemington Race Course, what you see covering those lush green paddocks is a covering of icy hail, in places inches deep. As you watch the hail splashing into the water, and also bouncing off the ground in the other videos, those hailstones are around the size of golf balls, and in some cases some of those hailstones were 4 inches across.

Part of the roofs of Southern Cross station and Etihad stadium have collapsed. Even more amazingly, the deluge of ice brought polar bears with it. …

HAIL has blanketed Melbourne like snow as a severe thunderstorm ripped through the city, forcing the cancellation of horse racing and sporting events.

Nineteen millimetres (almost an inch) of rain bucketed down over the city in less than 18 minutes this afternoon, the weather bureau said.

The huge storm cell, which hit about 2.40pm (AEDT), resulted in a total of 26 millimetres of rain in Melbourne in less an hour, bringing emergency services to a grinding halt as reports of flooding came in from across the city.