Here's a screenshot that was snapped from the Bureau of Meteorology weather radar as the storm was passing overhead.
These are a couple of photos that came around on the email this morning - a view of the storm from Yass (about 60km from Canberra). (I don't know who took these originally, so if it was you, let me know - they're fantastic)
The first thing that I noticed (after the noise of the hail made watching telly impossible) was that a bunch of hail was collecting in the chair just outside my room. Great opportunity to continue experiments with the phone camera, so I shot this video.
It's kind of murky but hopefully you get the gist.
A rising pool of water outside the front door was the first real concern - we have about a 15cm step up to our front door and are at the bottom of a slope from the street. The water came to within about 2cm of flowing through the door, so it was touch and go for a while there.
These clips show some of the limitations of the phone video camera in low light but I still like the high contrast and the way that everything disappears into the blackness. The white stuff is ice that had flowed down the hill with the water.
With the water flowing steadily to the door, it was interesting to see that enough ice/hail made it along to form a small dam, diverting most of the water under our side gate and into the garden. This isn't really visible in the clip but you can see the curve at the top of the ice that the water was following.
Again, I really like the degenerated quality of the video, the way the colours bleed into one another and the high contrast.
After a while, this got a bit boring (which if you've now watched these clips, you're probably vigourously nodding in agreement with) but there was more excitement to come.
Water had started vigourously flowing through the heating duct in the ceiling of the lounge room - not just a drip but a full fledged stream. This started about 30 mins after the storm did and continued for about an hour after it had finished. (where the water came from I'm a little puzzled but hopefully the handy guy will sort this out. One of the joys of renting I must say)
I think that the flickery quality of the picture came from the use of the energy efficient bulb we are using. Yes, a more sensible person would probably have turned the light off - but the water seemed to be confined to the heating duct.
Getting up this morning, damage seemed pretty light - a couple of chunks taken out of the window mounted brake light housing on my car, possibly a few small roof dents but that was about it.
Riding to work was eerie - at least the first part - ice everywhere and a mist rising to about 4 feet high as it melted. Here's a pic I found on Flickr which gives you some idea.
There are a swag of other pics on Flickr - best bet is to check out this search - http://flickr.com/search/?q=canberra+hail&s=int
