Friday, December 30, 2011

I am so NOT dreaming of a white Christmas......

Hi blogging friends Free Smiley Courtesy of www.millan.net

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and that Santa brought you some fantastic presents.  The start of Christmas Day was lovely and we spent it with family and went home late afternoon, but we ended up having a "White Christmas" because we had a series of terrible storms that afternoon with very large hail, flooding and much damage to properties and cars in our area.  I couldn't believe how quickly our area became flooded and I have never seen anything like this in my life.

We got off lightly compared to other people and we have family who have lost their cars and suffered significant property damage.   Sure we have holes in the laserlight roofing over our decking, plants shredded, the garage had some flooding and we had minor flooding in our kitchen - but honestly, that's nothing compared to other people.  It was scary being in the house watching the storm, seeing and hearing the hail pound the house and wondering what was going to happen next.

Here are some videos taken by a family member just down the road from us who lost their cars - the video footage is taken from the front yard of where they are living.  Where the water is rushing down is meant to be bitumen road.





It was hard to believe that an hour before that, we were sitting around with these same family members enjoying Christmas festivities.   The rain and hail was just relentless - and unfortunately, we had storm after storm which just added to our woes.  Just when you thought it was all over, another storm hit.  At 10:30pm that night when we heard yet another beginning of rumbling of thunder, my DH opened the front door and yelled at the sky "Enough already.....!" which I think echoed everyone's thoughts.  We just wanted it to stop!

We spent much of the late afternoon and early evening checking on our immediate neighbours - they all seemed to suffer the same sort of damage as us with broken skylights and smashed laserlight roofing from the large hail and hail damage to cars (fortunately our cars were in the garage and are OK).  Here is a photo of the size of the hail and some photos of our yard - the garden looked like it had snowed:

Yep, the hail was BIG - and this is somewhat melted!

Hail in the front garden

Hail in our trailer
Look - it's snowing......


And here is video of the main road which our street runs off:  pretty scary stuff......



Today the weather has been beautiful - sunny and a clear blue sky and the floodwaters have receded.  The naturestrips are piled high with carpets and other flood-damaged items.  We cleared out our garage of all the water damaged items and washed the muddy concrete floor - it was rather smelly - but at least nothing of any value was damaged unlike so many residents, businesses, schools and kindergartens who have lost so much more and have the hassle of dealing with insurance companies that are closed for the holiday season which leaves them in limbo. 

I am so NOT dreaming of a white Christmas......

Thanks for visiting my blog.  I'll be back soon with my final Christmas card sharing of the year.

Jocelyn


6 comments:

jimlynn said...

How awful this must have been! Thank goodness you're ok and didn't have too much damage!
Lynn

Robyn said...

Oh ! So sorry Jo!! The storm missed us thank goodness- weather always seems to go around our suburb!! We were in Ballarat and did not even hear about all the drama until we got home Boxing Day. So glad it was not worse for you and that everyone is ok. Hope your New Yeat is happier!

Shaz in Oz.CalligraphyCards said...

mm Jobear am so glad we did not have it and feel for you in it - we have had our fair share of storms here where I live esp. last year there was a bad few and they have now built a better storm alert systems so folks know when flooding from storms like that are heading heir way.
As you say not usual for where you live - but Oz is like that and we are blessed so much really, praising God no-one was killed and pray for all affected for kind insurers to replace and assist, love Shaz.xx

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness, that is so scary!! Glad you're okay Jo.
xxx

Merry said...

Oh wow....that would have certainly been terrifying. That is a lot of water. I haven't been watching the news so didn't realise this had happened. Wishing you all a speedy recovery from this...hope all the insurance claims go through quickly.

Anonymous said...

wow; severe storms are very scary. good to hear everyone is ok though.

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