Geelong erupted into chaos overnight on Sunday as lightning, wind, rain, and hail shook the region, leaving properties damaged and trees uprooted.
Lightning cracked across the skies for over three hours on Sunday evening, followed by heavy rain and wild winds across Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula and Surf Coast.
Geelong and Lara were hit particularly hard with flash flooding, with downed trees causing property damage and hail stones of 2cm to 4cm, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Some 63mm of rain was recorded at Lara, 52mm at Avalon Airport, 48mm at Clunes and 47mm at Geelong.
An SES spokesperson said VICSES Barwon South West volunteers were called to almost 500 requests for assistance (RFAs) between 10am on Sunday, February 2, and 10am on Monday, February 3.
“(Calls were) largely relating to trees down (222), building damage (169) and flood (83),” they said.
“Local volunteers have cleared almost 300 of these RFAs during this period, and volunteer crews are still out responding aided by other VICSES and CFA crews.”
Damage reports included a tree blown over onto shop awnings outside the Little Pakington complex along Pakington Street and power lost to traffic lights at the Waiora Avenue and Jasmine Street intersection along Ballarat Road in Geelong West.
Target Rifle Geelong was one of many buildings damaged across the region, with winds blowing off sheets of the club’s corrugated iron roof over the footpath next to the building.
Secretary and treasurer Bianca Waldron said the City of Greater Geelong council shut down the building and some of the surrounding area at around 1pm on Monday.
“We lost a few things like couches, chairs, tables, and carpets, so it’s just a matter of assessing everything,” she said.
“We lost about 90 per cent of our roofing, and that’s probably a 40-metre span by 10 to 15 metres, so we have lost a fair amount of roofing.
“There’s a footpath right next to our building, so we wanted to try and clear some of the roofing from there because that gets used a lot throughout the day by walkers and bike riders.
“We were alerted to the damage at about 7pm on Sunday after a member of the public was walking past (the club) and got caught up in the storm. She was seeking shelter in our veranda area when the roof came off.”
The storm has also led to power network damage in Geelong, with close to 2411 Powercor customers waiting for power to be restored throughout Monday.
Powercor will deploy a Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle (MERV) to Geelong later today to provide on-ground advice to community members impacted by outages.
More storms are forecasted for late this evening, with a chance of thunderstorms and north-to-northeasterly winds of 20 to 30km/h before turning northwesterly of 15 to 20km/h, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
