Wild weather including hail, rain and tornado-like winds swept through the Wheatbelt on Thursday evening, flooding homes, taking roofs off buildings, destroying crops and bringing trees and power poles down across roads.
Dozens of crop fires were started by lightning about 7pm, causing a frenzied response from bush fire brigades including Merredin and Nokaning, before torrential rains doused all the fires.
Flash flooding and up to 80ml of rain were received in Mukinbudin and other Wheatbelt localities.
Residents in Kellerberrin, Hines Hill, Trayning, Kununoppin, Nungarin and Mukinbudin spent Thursday night in darkness and Friday morning with no telephone or power connections.
One of the hardest hit by the storms was the Ryan family of the North Baandee area, who had three houses, three silos, and 12 sheds damaged and about 7000 acres of crop destroyed by hail.
One of the family’s houses is now uninhabitable as the ceiling has fallen in.
“Probably about 80 per cent of the crop is hail affected and 70 per cent is wiped out,” Geoff Ryan said.
“I’ve never seen weather like this in the whole time I’ve been farming here, and my father hasn’t either.
“Bits of roofing, tin, sheep feeders, 44 gallon drums and field bins were blown hundreds of metres and some even ended up kilometers away.”
Mr Ryan said he was in a front end loader on the farm when he became caught in the midst of the storm.
“I’d gone down the road to move a tree which fell over in an initial gust of wind, and the next thing, there’s a whole lot of trees laying down next to me and I’m sitting in the middle of it all in the little old front end loader, terrified,” he said.
“It went on for about 20 minutes which resulted in 60ml of rain, a heap of hail, and I reckon wind in excess of 140km an hour in some patches. It was like being in a cyclone.
“I got down and crouched in the middle of tractor, waiting for something to happen because I thought the windows were going to break.”
Mr Ryan said he was grateful to have received the assistance of 20 local neighbours and community members and Northam State Emergency Services volunteers who turned up on Friday to help with the clean-up.
The Enright family of North Baandee also experienced the full brunt of the storm, experiencing hail damage to about 90 per cent of their crop.
“We’ve lost our tool shed, the machinery shed has been damaged, the shearing shed door is gone, the shed roof is miles away on the side of the road, and all the trees in the garden are destroyed,” Melita Enright said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The house was without power after the storm and Mrs Enright said she was grateful to neighbours and community members who brought over power generators and offered assistance with the cleanup.
“I don’t think the Kodj Kodjin bin will be very busy this harvest,” she said.
“The crops look flattened but there are still some bits we can harvest off the ground.”
Nokaning farmers Bob and Yvonne Gray suffered a second round of damage to their crops, which were already damaged by hail the previous Friday, as well as damage to workers’ quarters, sheds and fences.
Western Power spokesperson Marissa Chapman said the storm had wreaked havoc on power infrastructure.
“We had about 40 hazards with poles and power lines falling down in the whole eastern and northern Wheatbelt,” she said.
“The largest power outage was in Mukinbudin where nine power poles were down due to lightning and wind.”
She said a few customers in Kellerberrin and some farming customers were still without power on Monday as it was difficult to fix fallen power poles without getting bogged in paddocks or damaging crops.
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