Along her street, fences were flattened and a neighbour’s trampoline was blown into another yard. Taylor said the roof of her home lost several metres’ worth of tiles.
“You wouldn’t want to be outside with ceramic tiles flying around,” she said.
A tarp covering Dianne Taylor’s roof in Wyndham Vale to prevent water leaking through.Credit: Dianne Taylor
Rain began leaking into a bedroom after an airborne tile punctured the ceiling, and Taylor said her family had put a tarp over the roof until insurance assessors could complete repairs.
Melbourne recorded 15 millimetres of rain in 15 minutes between 4.20pm and 4.35pm, making it the wettest day for 18 months. The daily total was 35 millimetres.
Flash flooding and lightning caused mass power outages and blocked roads. Water lapped at the doors of some businesses in Newport in Melbourne’s inner west.
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Across Victoria, the State Emergency Service received 650 calls for help. A third of those were from the Wyndham Vale, Werribee and Hoppers Crossing areas.
Videos posted online captured what appeared to be a funnel cloud descending from the storm base – a classic indicator of a tornado, Crock said.
“Tornadoes in Melbourne are really quite uncommon,” he said. “The event that we saw [on Sunday] is probably as close as we can get to confirming fully a tornado over Melbourne because they are quite rare.”
While small tornadoes occasionally occur across eastern Australia, Crock said they were rarely seen in such a populated area.
“To have it go over suburbs of Melbourne, that’s a pretty rare occurrence,” he said.
Preliminary analysis suggests the storm’s winds reached 90 to 120 kilometres per hour, consistent with a low-intensity tornado.
In Hoppers Crossing, resident Francoise Poroit said she was driving to her son’s home when she stopped to photograph the damage.
“I was really frightened; it was like I was in a movie,” she said.
“I’d never seen something like this before. So much destruction, and so much damage.”
As residents and emergency crews continue to clean up, meteorologists are keeping a close eye on the skies. While the week ahead is expected to be calmer, Crock warned that another outbreak of thunderstorms could develop by Friday.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the forecast at this point,” he said. “But we are coming into the peak of storm season, so everyone is well advised to stay alert and keep on top of the weather.”