{"id":948795,"date":"2026-11-01T14:08:45","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T14:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/948795\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T14:08:45","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T14:08:45","slug":"violent-tornado-like-storm-tears-roofs-from-buildings-near-yass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/948795\/","title":{"rendered":"Violent tornado-like storm tears roofs from buildings near Yass"},"content":{"rendered":"

A violent “tornado-like” storm cell has torn roofs from buildings, toppled trees and brought “golf-ball-sized hail” to a small rural community on the New South Wales Southern Tablelands.<\/p>\n

The system hit Good Hope, about 12 kilometres outside Yass, on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"Branches<\/p>\n

The SES says the storm ripped off six roofs and damaged the roofs of 10 other buildings. \u00a0 (Supplied: David Rothwell)<\/p>\n

Yass Valley councillor and resident David Rothwell said the storm was unlike anything he had ever seen.<\/p>\n

“You could actually see it blowing around, like wind going one direction, wind coming the other way, and then it started twisting,” Cr Rothwell said.<\/p>\n

“It made a hell of a noise and then things got pretty wild.<\/p>\n

“Lightning strikes and big hail, golf-ball-sized, pounding windows and the roof.”<\/p>\n

\"Trees<\/p>\n

Destruction following the extreme weather event across the Southern Tablelands yesterday afternoon.\u00a0 (Supplied: NSW RFS Southern Tablelands Zone)<\/p>\n

Cr Rothwell described it as “pretty scary”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I went outside to try and grab all the furniture that was blowing and stuff going everywhere [but] gave that up pretty quick when I saw the dog get blown into the wood shed,” he said.Storm ‘hit very hard and very fast’<\/p>\n

The NSW SES said the storm ripped off six roofs and damaged the roofs of 10 other buildings.<\/p>\n

Strong winds toppled trees, initially blocking road access to the area.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/p>\n

SES commander for the Yass Hilltops area Deanne Young says they didn’t get much warning before the storm hit.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lish Fejer)<\/p>\n

SES commander for the Yass Hilltops area, Deanne Young, described it as a “tornado-like event”.<\/p>\n

“It hit very hard and very fast and did some pretty significant damage,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There did appear to be a bit of a funnel forming out of the clouds.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t get a lot of warning that there was even going to be a storm, but that’s how the weather goes quite often in our little patch.”<\/p>\n

Good Hope Resort owner Elizabeth Richardson-Szabo said that a pergola roof from one of the houses in the holiday park came off and “went rolling up the paddock 120 metres away”.<\/p>\n

“[The roof] took out a power pole, and some power lines came down in the park,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

The owner of Good Hope Resort says a pergola roof from one of the properties “went flying” and travelled 120 metres away.\u00a0 (Supplied: Elizabeth Richardson-Szabo)<\/p>\n

She said the park was then without power for about eight hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Our poor neighbours they copped it pretty bad and I feel sorry for them,” Ms Richardson-Szabo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But thankfully no one got hurt in the process so that’s the biggest and best news.”<\/p>\n

Shipping container, horse float tossed around<\/p>\n

For Good Hope resident Tom Walsh, the “phenomenal” weather event turned into “more than a bit of rain”.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Tom Walsh says he’s never seen a weather event like it before.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lish Fejer)<\/p>\n

“It just came quick; it looked like it was building up and then it was just here. It was all over and done with in sort of 10-15 minutes,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said his shed no longer had a side wall and that a lot of the roof panels had been blown out.<\/p>\n

A shipping container on his property was moved roughly 300 metres by the storm and took out a horse float in its path.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Horse<\/p>\n

A shipping container on Tom Walsh’s property took out a horse float during the storm. (ABC News: Lish Fejer)<\/p>\n

“I lived in the Pilbara for 15 years, [and] had a few cyclones [that] we went through,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never seen anything like this. This much damage is crazy.”<\/p>\n

No injuries linked to the weather event have been reported, but Good Hope residents are now facing a lengthy clean-up.<\/p>\n

“We just keep tidying now, figure out how to get a 40-foot shipping container back on its side and back in the right paddock,” Mr Walsh said.<\/p>\n

Cr Rothwell described the damage as “heartbreaking”.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got mates whose houses had their roofs ripped off,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s terrible, sheds destroyed, horrible.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A violent “tornado-like” storm cell has torn roofs from buildings, toppled trees and brought “golf-ball-sized hail” to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2666,64,63,2667,151290,4360,2668,44,17711,1192],"class_list":["post-948795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canberra","tag-clean-up","tag-extreme-weather","tag-local-stories","tag-news","tag-storm","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}