Residents on the NSW Mid North Coast are cleaning up after a storm left towns covered in hail so thick it looked like snow.
Storms swept through the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers yesterday afternoon, with the State Emergency Service (SES) responding to 125 call-outs, more than 70 of them in the Wauchope area.
Sandra Hanson at the Wauchope Rural Supply Store said the hail came down heavily and their shop and stock was damaged.
"It was very hectic ... it was like snow, the whole car park just looked like snow," she said.
"We turned around and inside the shop, all the guttering couldn't take the hail and it was like it was raining inside, so we were frantically grabbing stock off shelves."
Mid North Coast SES deputy zone commander Tony Day said more crews would arrive to help with the clean-up today.
"We managed to complete all but nine of those jobs into the evening, and this morning we have some crews from Newcastle coming up to assist us in managing the fatigue for our crews that were tapped out last night," Mr Day said.
"Those Newcastle crews will help clean out those last nine or so jobs."
Mr Day said many of the call-outs were related to roof damage and fallen trees.
"We had a roof off at a property out there at Beechwood ... we also had, mainly because of the extensive hail, a lot of gutters jamming up and water ingressing into properties and so that caused some damage," he said.
"Plenty of trees down, powerlines down, so it was a really good example of our training. We were able to mobilise quickly some significant resources."
Lower Clarence smashed by storms
The Lower Clarence towns of Yamba and Iluka were also hard hit by storms, with some roofs blown off.
A motel under construction at Iluka Bowls Club was damaged by strong winds, and traffic on parts of the Pacific Motorway at New Italy was reduced to a crawl, with fallen trees littering the road.
SES zone commander Ian Leckie said crews were called to help 33 home owners in the area.
"It's been mostly roof and tree jobs in and around there. We've got one building that's seen three walls collapse," he said.
"There's two roofs that have been blown off, pool fences are down and garage doors have been blown in. We've got reports of houses with water right though them."
Yamba resident Harry Menzies got to the Yamba Sports Complex soon after the storm hit.
"The roof had been ripped off our storage shed and ended up in another car park about 60 metres away," he said.
Iluka Rural Fire Service captain Tony Belton said his crew mobilised as soon as the storm passed, helping to clear roads and secure people's homes.
"It just built up and built up and we copped the full brunt of this one," he said.
What caused the hail storms?
Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said the storm was caused by an upper atmosphere chill.
"That brought some very heavy rainfall and hail particularly around the Wauchope area, where we did see large accumulation of small hail that made it look like snow," he said.
"Generally, the hail was in that 1-2cm size, and there were a few reports of hail up to 3cm."
"It was very cold in the upper levels of the atmosphere so there was a lot of hail, and it was a large storm, so the hail fell for a prolonged period and that's what led to large accumulations of hail ... just to the west of Port Macquarie around the Wauchope area."
Mr Narramore said this was the peak time for hail storms on the lower east coast of Australia.
He said large hail was often produced in unfavourable conditions in the upper atmosphere, but yesterday's storm was different.
"The atmosphere was slightly different [on Wednesday] so our storms are producing more large accumulations of smaller hail, rather than the big hail, but less of it," Mr Narramore said.
