The great hailstorm

I was going to write this post yesterday but it would have been a bit of a Debbie Downer post but today it's a positive post. Whoa! I know. Oh and plus I've been flailing around bed pretty sick which makes my effort levels minimal. But with out further ado, I bring you the following blog post. Hurrah!

In March of 2010, which was about 18 months ago (I think) Perth was hit my a huge hailstorm. Now you should know that Perth has a very mellow climate, apart from our regular 40 degree Celsius (104F) and over days. We just don't get very many wild storms, The last cyclone we had in the area was way before my time and so was the last earthquake. The cities and towns south of us get wilder weather and the way northern cities get crazy cyclone weather, but Perth just doesn't. I think I've made that mildly clear?

Anyhoo along comes this normal day. I head off to uni, catching the train as per usual. As I get off the train to walk to my car so I can get home, I do notice that the sky looks a touch ominous and I secretly hope for a storm because I do love a good storm. As soon as I get in my car, it starts trickling a little and I get pretty excited. About four blocks away from home, these cute little bits of hail start hitting my car and I am stoked - I do love a good bit of hail. I rush (at the speed limit, of course) home and make a dash for it inside because our tin roof makes the rain and hail sounds lush. Mum and my cat are inside just going about their daily business, Mum sitting in her work room beading and Tiki chilling out on the couch in the back room.

Literally as soon as I walk in the front door, the hail turns evil. I kid you not. The pleasant tap tap of that little pea sized hail is turning into freaking hammers. Mum and I head outside on the verandah where we are still protected to watch while I of course bring my camera. It's pretty exciting and I'm keen to stay out.

The hail pouring down.

Mum starts getting a little worried so I head inside with her and we go into Mum and Dad's bedroom which is at the front of the house with the window about a metre behind where the above photo was taken. And then Mum gets a bit freaked out about the cat who gets scared at the best of times. I head off to get the cat which is when I walk past windows like that below.

It's a bit hard to see but if you look closely you can see all the glass over our dishes and in the sink from the windows above.

More broken windows.

I find the freaked out cat in my bedroom which is luckily on the other side of the house from all the broken windows. I shut my door and notice that there is hail in my bedroom. For it to have gotten in there it would have had to travel about 10 metres through the broken window on the other side of the house - this hail was nuts!

By this stage I yell out to mum and tell her what has happened but there's not really much we can do so we stay in the bedroom until the hail is over. We try calling Dad and Sal to see if they're okay but the phone lines were a touch disconnected.

 These to shots above are of our back garden which has never been so covered in green. And we had a temporary pool installed where the sunken part of a garden filled with hail stones and rain.

Our lovely temporary pool.

Once the hail stopped we managed to get in contact with the family. Dad was in his office in the city and all he'd seen out his window was a pretty big thunderstorm. Once he found out what happened to our house he came straight home which took a long time because of all the flooded roads to cover our windows. My sister sal was at the pub by the beach and again had only watched a pretty big thunderstorm. She headed on home and again took along time.

Once the hail stopped we came outside which is when we noticed the damage to our poor cars. We had no idea that they had been so badly pummelled. You can't see in the above picture but the windscreen was actually shattered.

Oop there's the shattered windscreen.

That was my car and mum's car parked right next to mine was equally wrecked. Luckily we both had insurance. I'd only had my poor car for two and a half months.

 The storm bought with it many exciting new things. Take for example the new tree installation in our back yard. Pity it crushed our fence on its arrival.

Dad surveying the damage.

And about an hour or two after the storm hit, the sun began to set and there was this eery glow on the aftermath. It was a weird time because everyone was just outside looking around at the craziness.

Anyway what entailed was many long conversations with insurance companies as we tried to get the repairs we needed. We are so thankful that we had both house and contents insurance as well as car insurance, because we most certainly needed it then. Our house windows were repaired within a week, the tree was removed within the week, our cars were replaced within about two months, the pummelled tin roof was replaced within about six months and the last details such as the destroyed cushions and curtains were finally delivered today!! HURRAH! We have finally gotten everything back eighteen months later. 

Now I know that compared to the crazy weather events and natural disasters that occur worldwide, we were very very fortunate and nobody was injured or anything, but it has still been a long process for all of us. We were in one of the worse hit areas, if not the worse. The hospitals around the corner from us suffered extensive damage and flooding and nearly everyone there also got there cars written off.

It feels good to be able to tick this event off as done.