Hail Storms

by **houndsoflove13** Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:46 am

Anybody see the hail storm hit areas on the news...I'll try and find some pics.

Clean-up operation after freak hail storm
The residents of a Devon town hit by a freak hail storm which left them up to 5ft deep in ice face a huge clean-up operation.

More than 100 homes were flooded as the hailstones melted after the six-hour deluge in Ottery St Mary on Thursday.

An estimated 270 million cubic feet of hail – enough hail to fill the Millennium Dome twice over – fell on a five-mile square area of the town.

Thirty people had to be rescued from houses and cars as floodwaters, up to 5ft deep in places, washed through the town and the nearby village of Tipton St John, after hail stones blocked drains and two cars were washed into the river Otter causing a further build-up.

The area at the centre of the storm received three inches of rain – well over half its monthly rainfall – in six hours, 11 times as much as neighbouring towns.

Residents described seeing a "river of ice" flowing down the main street with many forced to wade chest deep to safety.

By morning the streets was left like a "lunar landscape" with cars buried under "a meringue" of hail and snow, 2ft deep across the town with drifts up to 6ft in places.

Low lying fields and roads were also under several feet of water, trapping cars, lorries and even a fire engine and causing a series of small landslides.

Emergency services dealt with more than 150 calls in a few hours.

Juliet Hall, 34, had to be rescued from a flooded road after being stranded on her way to hospital after going into labour three weeks early.

She was rescued in a police 4x4 and rushed to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital where she gave birth to her son Nathan eight hours later weighing 6lb 10oz.

About 100 homes were flooded, with many people rescued by coastguard boats.

Now the residents face a clean-up operation likely to take several months.

Although rain had been predicted, the intensity of the storm over such a small area took forecasters by surprise.

The Met office said that icy airflows mixing with warmer currents nearer the ground prompted the kind of intense thunder storm usually only encountered at the height of summer.

"It is truly an occasion to use the word 'freak'," said forecaster Barry Grommet.

"I don't think you would have been able to forecast it in this sort of intensity."

Flood defences installed three years ago at a cost of £5 million were overwhelmed despite being checked only a few hours beforehand.

There were no reports of any injuries but an evacuation centre was set up at the local hospital, taking in around 20 people including staff from a ravelling fairground who had been staying in caravans near the river.

Simon Devay, who was staying with three generations of his family in a caravan, said members of the fairground group had to wade through chest high water.

"The sleet was coming down and people were saying that they could see rats and mice floating on top," he said.

"It was like a volcano with a wall of sludge and hail coming down the hill like larva."

Tony Fabry, 45, whose wife Sharon is the local sub post mistress, said the post office sorting room was under several inches of water

"I felt like King Canute trying to keep the tide of silt and mud out," he said.

"People will be cleaning up for weeks

"I saw beer barrels, sandwich boards from the local pub and even a children's plastic slide floating down the road.

"It came so quickly and even if it had been forecast there wouldn't have been anything we could have done."