Photos: Incredible scenes after supercell storm batters Mid-North Coast
“The sky went black”: Residents were stunned by a the ferocity of a hailstorm which has left them with a huge clean up on the Mid-North Coast. See the amazing pics.
Coffs Harbour
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North Coast residents are picking up the pieces of their damaged homes after a raging hailstorm ripped through the Coffs Harbour region on Wednesday, leaving State Emergency Service crews with almost 800 calls for help.
Toormina and Sawtell as well as Boambee just north of Coffs Harbour CBD were the hardest hit.
The vicious supercell event tore through the region about 2:30pm on Wednesday, dropping giant hailstones across the east coast that inflicted major damage to property.
The ceiling of a Lowes clothing store in the Toormina Gardens Shopping Centre caved in as hail and water got inside.
The State Emergency Service deployed eight of the crew members from the Wauchope and Camden Haven units in the early hours of Thursday morning to Coffs Harbour to assist with almost 800 job requests that had been reported following the storm.
Sawtell resident of over 50 years, Max Roby, 84, had the rear part of his roof cave in after the hail clogged up the roof’s drainage and rain flooded through his home.
He said the whole ordeal was pretty “scary” and that he’d never experienced a storm with so much ferocity in his life.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr Roby said.
“The sky went black and the clouds came in and it rained and then the hail came.”
He said water had got into the rear of his home.
“Even if you had the gutter cleaned out it would still overflow,” he said.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen and I’ve been around a lot of Australia.
He said the barrage lasted for about half an hour.
“Then the rain all turned to ice and cars were skidding everywhere,” he said.
“It was freezing.”
Mr Roby’s neighbour Mark Robinson had parked his beloved Toyota RAV4 under a tinned-roof carport to protect it from potential damage during the storm.
But the roof was quickly bashed up by the sheer force of the hailstones and his car was damaged.
“I tried to get the State Emergency Service here and we were on the phone for probably an hour and a half to two hours and didn’t get anywhere, so we put the tarp on Max’s roof because the skylight had busted through,” Mr Robinson said.
“It rained a lot, and the ice was washing down the street.”
The clean-up is expected to go well into the weekend with many businesses suffering from extensive damages.
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