Massive hailstorm ploughs into Australia Capital
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A massive hailstorm ploughed into Australia Capital Territory (ACT) may suggested that weather in 2011 will offer more extremes than in the past year, Canberra Times reported on Thursday.
ACT emergency crews responded to about 110 calls for help on Wednesday night with "golf ball-size" hailstones damaging roofs and causing drainage dramas into the Tuggeranong Valley.
According to ACT State Emergency Services (SES) chief officer Tony Graham, most of the work dealt with cracked or broken tiles and skylights. "A severe storm warning had been issued by the Bureau of Meteorology, but we were certainly not anticipating that there'd be such a significant impact across just a couple of suburbs," Graham told Canberra Times.
ACT's Conder resident Anthony Caffery said the storm which hit his Montefiore Crescent house about 6.30 p.m. had been the most intense he had experienced, with hail initially falling as small slivers of ice.
"And then five minutes later, it was starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger and heavier and it was just big, chunky, like golf ball size," he told Canberra Times on Wednesday night.
"It's something I've never seen or witnessed before." Among the items damaged at his house were some lights, a sandpit cover and the roof of a wooden wishing well.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology issued its weather summary for 2010 on Wednesday, showing Australia experienced its third wettest year on record during 2010, with 11 months of above- average rainfall soaking the east of the country due to the La Nina weather system.
Last year was the wettest year in Canberra in almost four decades, as the 10-year-long drought finally broke.
