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 Storms bring hail, heavy rain to southern WA
A trough with an embedded low pressure system ambled back and forth across southern WA yesterday giving scattered very heavy rain to the South Coast, Great Southern, Central Wheat Belt and southern Goldfields. All this happened in a broad area of cloud, with the instability generated by the trough and low bringing storms and at least one spectacular hailstorm at Koolyanobbing.
The heaviest recorded rain fell from east of Albany to the southern Goldfields where a number of locations picked up more than their May average rainfall in a few hours. In the 24 hours to 09.00 Thursday, 11 May, the heaviest recorded falls were in an area from NE of Albany to Esperance to Norseman with the highest at Bremer Bay (55.6mm) and Mettler (49.0mm), both between Albany and Ravensthorpe. In the 24 hours to 09.00 this morning, the heaviest falls were in and around Esperance; Beaumont West had 50.0mm in the gauge, its highest April total in a 36-year history, while Esperance had 45.6mm.
Koolyanobbing, a mining town 50km NE of Southern Cross, had a dramatic, brief and very heavy hail storm that covered a 1km by 4km swath of ground around the airstrip with up to 5cm of white hail [The Age]. Looking at the photos of what seems to be a wintry snow scene, you can see why people sometimes confuse the hail with snow.
With many storms occurring across a huge area like this, which has few people and even fewer raingauges, it's always interesting to speculate how many phenomenal falls of rain and hail occur unseen and unknown.
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