Storm-force
winds sweep southeastern states as Victorian damage tops $3mNEWSBITS: Unusually warm in northern NSW, southern Qld
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| The broadscale analysis for 10am EST this morning as the deep low midway between Antractica and Australia bottomed out at 945hPa. BoM |
The National Weather Extremes top wind gusts box below tells the story of a remarkably windy day across the southern halves of SA and NSW, and Victoria and Tasmania. An extreme pressure gradient between a 945hPa low southwest of Tasmania and a 1012 high over southern Queensland produced widespread gales, and peak wind gusts recorded close to midnight at 122km/h at both Mt Buller and Fawkner Beacon in Port Phillip Bay in Victoria. Many un-exposed stations recorded sustained gales with storm-force gusts.
Across Victoria, over 2,500 calls for assistance were received by the SES, whose spokesperson, Rhys Maggs, said it was one of the most signifcant storms on record. Preliminary estimates by the Insurance Council of Australia put the damage bill at $3m. In Melbourne, 450 SES volunteers responded to hundreds of calls overnight as trees came down and roofing was blown off. Every Melbourne suburb was affected. Volunteers had to be brought in from outside Melbourne to help. A nursing hostel in West Gippsland had to be evacuated when large sections of its roof were blown off. Police closed Westgate Bridge to traffic for about an hour at the height of the gale.
In Victoria's northwest, a house
was unroofed at Koreleigh near Swan Hill, and a gum tree was blown
onto a flat at Mildura. Downed powerlines cut electricity to 500
users at Portland in the state's west. A number of houses in Broadford
and Kilmore suffered roof damage, while there were reports
of cars around Shepparton being caked with red mud as wind-borne dust
was followed by light rain. Many trees were brought down, hitting power
lines and causing blackouts. SES emergency management officer Gavin Kelly
said "We were looking at a number of areas and surprisingly enough
Alexandra was one of those. Alexandra rarely suffers from a wind
storm and they had winds there gusting last night
up to 76 kilometres an hour. In around Kilmore, Broadford, Strathcreek
and Kinglake had a number down, and Beechworth as well." In Alexandra,
the wind devastated the Alexandra Racing Club, with 70 horse stalls destroyed,
roofing ripped from the clubroom, and trees and powerlines downed. A steel
power pole was snapped in two by the wind. Less obvious but more serious
damage was caused to western Victoria's grain crop, with the strong winds
accompanied by warm temperatures stripping moisture from crops.
In Canberra, heavy rain accompanied strong winds to produce a spate of minor car accidents, while fallen trees and power lines produced power outages. A wind storm late this afternoon in the Hunter Valley of NSW caused most damage around Lake Macquarie, where the Warners Bay Post Office suffered damage to its roof, awnings and windows, and a large industrial shed at Morisset was blown off its foundations. Trees and power lines were brought down at Mayfield in Newcastle, and at Medowie, 20km NE of the city. Five thousand customers were affected by power outages.
It has been an unusually warm night and day in northern NSW and southern Queensland. Both overnight and daytime temperatures were 6 to 11° above average in a broad band running from southwestern Queensland to the NSW Mid North Coast (see temperature variation extremes below).
DROUGHTWATCH
The small settlement of Coolabah, between Nyngan and Bourke in NSW, has run out of water. The towns dam is now dry, and water is being carted in for the population of 40. The dam was substantially extended after the last drought, and locals are pointing to this and the small population as an indication of the severity of the drought in western NSW.