MASSIVE HAIL STORM THIS AFTERNOON.

We have lived here for 40 odd years and never seen a hail storm like we had this afternoon...
It came out of nowhere and suddenly hit us..
It hit us before we had time to even shift cars or even cover them..

It is unusual to get a storm like this at this time of year.......
The Hail ranged in size from the size of marbles right up to the size of baseballs or cricket balls...
Fortunately for us, our main car, although out, was parked half under a tree so sustained very little damage...

Just before the storm hit.....

The storm was still hovering around after the hail had fallen...

It took a few minutes for me to realize it was even hailing.  At first I just thought it was a severe thunderstorm, but it wasn't long until there were some rather loud noises of something hitting the walls and windows of the house....

At first the hail was the size of marbles and I thought that was bad enough.

at first, the hail was just the size of marbles...

covering the lawn..

 Then they started getting bigger...

golf ball size..

 Then the hail falling was the size of golf balls....

 Our next door neighbor had just washed her car so it was still out in the yard but the hail was too big and falling too fast for them to run out and shift the cars so poor Megan ended up with a few dints on the roof of her almost new car....

Megan's car out in the rain and hail..

 Steve ended up giving me one of his hats so that I could put it on and in that way when I ducked out into the yard to pick up some of the boulders that were falling from the sky...

Out picking up some of the hail

Wearing Steve's Hat so that I don't get hit on the head with the hail...

 Once the hail had eased off, Steve and I headed out into the front yard to see what damage the hail had done to firstly the cars and also to our gardens..

Much bigger than a golf ball

This one would fit into the palm of your hand

Some of them were massive

Another massive piece of hail

 Fortunately the cars didn't seem to get too damaged.  Our good white car was half parked under a tree, and I am sure that this saved it from the brunt o the hail..

Our neighbor James holding up some of the pieces that fell near their car ( and proably on it as well)

 Some of these were massive and took quite a while to melt....

Once the storm was over though we were blessed with the most beautiful rainbow...
These photos were taken from the front verandah of a friend of mine..

Beautiful rainbow lit up St Joseph's Cathedral..

Well that was a totally unexpected afternoon.  We saw a storm on the BOM site but it didn't look like we were going to get it and we had no warning... It arrived quickly and poured it's fury out of the sky and then left almost as quickly as it came....  Hope we don't get too many more like this one...