All hail the tornado

I drove Anna to work on Saturday for 3pm. As I drove home, the sky took on an interesting shade of slate grey, and an impressive lightning bolt forked the sky from left to right (it would have made a spectacular photo). Turning into my driveway 25 minutes later the heavy rain began. It looked like one of those quick summer showers, so I figured I'd wait out the five minutes before going in. Something hit the roof of my car; it sounded like a medium-sized rock. I was quite surprised given that size of rock could only have been thrown and I wasn't exactly driving under a bridge or similar, I was parked in my driveway! Then the rock noises multiplied and I honestly thought they might come through the car roof; you can hear my shock and fear in the video I linked to above. I'm not usually one for sitting swearing to myself alone in my car, but it was scary as hell! I was imagining it looking like an acne-scarred teenager by the time I exited the vehicle!

After less than a couple of minutes, it all calmed down and I got out to find the weirdest hailstones I have ever seen in my life all around me on the ground.

The car seemed unharmed, so I went back to business as usual... until the sun came out. Between our two houses, we have a perspex roof with grapes growing. I could see circular shadows all over the patio, that I had never seen before. I looked up to notice the roof was completely destroyed, with hundreds of holes where the stones had simply come straight through, and now the sun was shining through them. And then noticed the patio was covered in shards of perspex.

We sit under this roof in the rain, we dry clothes here too when the weather is changeable. What a nightmare! Then, to my horror I realised that this was probably the least of my problems. This 30m2 of wrecked perspex was nothing compared to my 90m2 shed and toolroom with electrical lights and sockets, which is housed in an outhouse on my field. I wandered up and found it in an even worse state.

But, imagine my even greater shock the following morning when all the local newspaper headlines talked about a tornado hitting the coast at 3-15pm the day before, 15km from my house ripping through a popular campsite and causing all sort damage because of the unique large and oddly shaped hail tornados cause! Who knew? 

I'm now waiting on the insurance assessor, who seems to be very busy in our area today!