Tasmania weather: Hail storms and lightning strikes start fires in northwest

The boss of TasNetworks has warned of further power outages overnight, with 100+ transformers hit by lightning and more storms on the way. LATEST

Hail has lashed parts of Tasmania's northwest, with lightning strikes starting several fires.

Hail and thunderstorms have lashed parts of Tasmania as lightning strikes spark a number of fires in the northwest, causing tens of thousands of homes to lose power.

Scotchtown resident Brendan Costello shared some photos of the hail, telling the Mercury a storm passed through about 11.30am Wednesday.

“The hail lasted for about 10 to 15 minutes,” he said.

“Pretty sure the weather man missed this one, hail the size of golf balls, some of them.”

A Tasmania Fire Service spokesperson confirmed crews were battling multiple blazes sparked from lightning strikes across the state’s northwest.

Firefighters were responding to at least seven fires in the region that had ignited since 1pm, including a structural fire at 536 Nunns Rd, Mount Hicks, southwest of Burnie.

Four fires are between the Wynyard to Penguin area, while three have spread from Devonport to Port Sorell.

Two others have been reported near Deloraine and Elizabeth Town, while northern Tasmania has also been impacted.

Four fires have been reported around Hadspen, Carrick and Longford.

Storms leave 30,000 without power

The storms also left thousands of Tasmanians without power.

TasNetworks said the weather event had left 30,000 customers without power across the northwest.

“We’re responding as quickly as possible, and will update customers when we know more.

Please stay at least 10 metres clear of any fallen powerlines or other damage and report it to TasNetworks on 132 004,” TasNetworks said.

At 2pm, TasNetworks advised they had managed to stabilise the transmission network and reduce the number of affected customers to about 8000.

“However, it’s still too dangerous to send crews into certain areas, and we’re starting to find lightning damage on parts of the distribution network,” they said in a statement.

“That means there’s a high likelihood of a few thousand customers being off overnight. We’ll make every effort to contact those customers by SMS, but recommend that people start making back-up plans now.”

They said the northern stormfront was expected to clear the east coast about 5pm but a second storm front was crossing southwest Tasmania, impacting Hobart and southern communities.

At 5pm, TasNetworks said they had reduced the number of affected customers to about 5000, “but expect somewhere between 500 and 1000 customers to remain without power overnight”.

“Many of our transformers have been directly struck and damaged by lightning,” they advised.

“We’ll need to conduct daylight damage assessments and prioritise potentially dangerous situations, followed by general repairs.

“We’ll endeavour to post restoration times for most outages on our website by 5pm Thursday, with most repairs expected to completed by Sunday afternoon.

“Thanks for your patience and understanding.”

TasNetworks CEO Sean McGoldrick said it was a statewide effort to restore power to most of the 30,000 customers, with one of the crew members repairing the network getting “a minor shock” when lightning hit.

“Up north we have about 20-30 crew there and we’ll have the same down south,” Mr McGoldrick said.

“It’s quite an intense and severe storm, a very fast-moving front … it is entirely lightning, it’s not rain or flooding or any other damage.

“It’s lightning strikes on our network that can cause momentary outages, where we have to trip the line off and reinstate it, or it can cause physical damage such as blowing up a transformer when they are struck by lightning and we’ve had a number of instances of that through today as well.”

The TasNetworks boss apologised to customers who had lost power in the storm, but emphasised safety was their number one plea.

“Please stay safe, look after each other, stay away from any fallen lines you may come across and please report them to us on 132 004,” Mr McGoldrick said.

“When there is lightning activity in the actual area we have to wait for that to clear so our crews can be safe.”

He said some ‘unexpected lightning’ caused one of their crew members to receive a minor shock, but the male crew member was luckily uninjured.

Despite the severe weather across most of the day, no warnings were issued by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Originally published as Tasmania weather: Hail storms and lightning strikes start fires in northwest