The Mother of all Storms

[Family_Dog]

Place: Klerksdorp
Date: 29 September 2009
Commencement of Storm: 17:00
Worst of Storm over at: 18:00


Pick & Pay Hyper open air parking.

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One of our "Streets"

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Pictures 13 & 14: Underground Parking at a Mall

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Someone's garden (not mine, mine was worse than this)

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Mine was more like this:

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C'mon baby light my fire...

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The open parking lot is at the local P'nP Hyper, two blocks from where I live, across the road from where I work.

The Hyper lost some of its roofing from the hail and the hail inside was nearly as bad as outside.

Water streamed into the entrances of the Hyper.

The underground parking lot is from one of the Malls, don't know which one and I ain't going to park there again either!

The hail was upto 160mm deep in places, the dog food bowls were completely covered by hail.

My pool was full of leaves and hail stones up to about 30mm diameter, and three dead pigeons.

My fish pond was overflowing, fill of leaves and hail stones.

The road outside resembled a very fast-flowing river.

Seven broken windows in my house.

Caravan roof full of dents, requires new roof.

The storm was was 27 hours ago, there are still isolated piles of hail stones in my garden.

I still love Klerksdorp!


The photos were courtesy of the OFM website. No ways was I going to stand outside and take photos, look what happened to that Palm tree.


-F_D

[Mud Dog]

YEBO !!! See what happens when you complain about dreary mine dumps and no sea-views!

Hope you're fully insured!

[CasKru]

Sorry to hear about the damages you suffered. Hopefully no fatalities as a storm like that can cause many....

Respect to mother nature

[legend35]

Eric ,I could not even emagine that in my town.Did you have any damage from the storm?

[Family_Dog]

The garage roof where I park Hot Dog and the C180 leaked, but that's understandable as it is a flat roof. I'm thinking of redoing it completely, Then only the caravan roof is full of dents and then the 7 broken windows in the house. Fortunately, I removed 16 trees from my yard when I built the new garage for White Fang & Bulldog, or I would have had some damage from broken branches or toppling trees.

I haven't checked for broken windows at the new garage yet, forgot about that. Will do so tomorrow.

We had something like 140mm rain in under an hour, the lightning was awe-inspiring (and creepy!) and the hail was bad, I could hear it coming about 10 minutes before it reached my house. Pick 'n Pay was still a mess today, they are mopping up fridges and repacking shelves.

We had some water damage at work, some of the radio boxes were wet, but luckily the radios are nicely wrapped in plasctic bags so they were not damaged.

Oh, one of the road entrances to Pick & Pay suffered some subsidence damage too. Our street at the corner requires a 4x4 now to cross all the mud, sand, stone and rocks that washed into the road from the building site on the corner. Tar is nowhere to be seen.


-F_D

[Mud Dog]

We only have occasional hailstorms down this way, and then normally no bigger than marbles, but a few years ago we had a similarly big one .... also heard it coming before it hit. Happened in the dead of night and the sound woke us, kids came running through wide eyed and my first thoughts were that the Rapture had started. :D

Funnily the trees seemed to offer a little protection .... on the sides of the house without trees there were big holes punched through the PVC guttering .... have you checked yours?

Glad your vehicles were safe .... I still have a few small reminders in Mud Dog's bonnet from hailstones that came through the glassfibre 'skylight' panels of his 'kennel'.

[ToyX4]

Eric, 10 minutes before 5 o'clock, I raced pass the casino on my way home. I saw that storm coming and decided to get out of Klerkies.
Glad I went when I did.

[Family_Dog]

Additional damage:

So far we have found 15 dead birds in my back yard, mainly pigeons, and the back yard is still completely covered with leaves from all the surrounding trees. Toll of smashed windows now equals eight.

Riaan, you did well to get out of here... reports of damage are still coming in. No reported loss of life though.

See here as well:
Klerksdorp Hail Storm


-F_D

[Hoppy]

I have witnessed hailstorms like that many years ago in pretoria, scary stuff, we had a direct hit on our house, reduced some furniture and wood flooring to splinters.
Only the panelbeaters and glass merchants smiled.
Glad you're ok

[Mud Dog]

No gutter damage!!?? ..... The only way I know of gutters surviving is if they are full of water or choked with debris that cushions the fall of the hailstones.

[Bloues]

Jammer vir jou skade Eric - mens gun nie eers jou fyand so iets !!!!

PS: Het jy darem mense gehelp uitsleep met jou Hilux .......?????

[Scorpion]

Must be the biggest thing to hit Klerkies in a century...

[Family_Dog]

Glad you're ok

We're tough old cookies here in Klerksdorp!

No gutter damage!!?? ..... The only way I know of gutters surviving is if they are full of water or choked with debris that cushions the fall of the hailstones.

Gutters have long since been removed! They were worthless and loved blocking up!

PS: Het jy darem mense gehelp uitsleep met jou Hilux .......?????

Die twee Hiluxs was die eerst ding wat ek gecheck het... hoog & droog!

Must be the biggest thing to hit Klerkies in a century...

This is becoming a regular occurrence, we had another one in January of this year. In June this year the Insurance had just finally finished replacing the water-damaged ceilings in three rooms, new BIC in the main bedroom and repainting the walls that were damaged by the January storm. Some years before this, my study in which my computer is, looked really snazzy, the whole of one side had a broad waterfall inside the house where the roof had leaked from the weight of the melting hail on it. The waterfall was just short of reaching the desk on which the computer is mounted.


-F_D

[Bfreesani]

Hey Eric, I was on my way to the Dam and stopped off at the Spar for some goodies for supper. On my way over the bridge the storm seemed to come from behind and surround us. Like you say, the lightning was something else. While in the Spar, the storm hit. I think we saw the edge of it by the looks of the pictures. It was still scary when we hit the road. It was slippery, and with manual hubs, I was not getting out to be knocked silly by those hail stones.

Hillbilly did not do bad in the hail. He got a bit of a cellulite look on the bonnet (the only metal part exposed to the hail), cracked my my right side window deflector shield and broke and little plastic cover bracket on the roofrack.

The MTN site suffered some damage on aircon units that have not even been commissioned yet. The radiators have been panel beaten and the fine radiator fins have been pushed in nearly to the core in a few places.

At the dam a few guys were flooded out in their caravans.

I am trying to download some pics off my phone to post, but I am on here so seldom, it seems my computer forgot who I am

[Family_Dog]

David, I was at the Spar in January when the storm broke then as well, also about 5:30PM... seems to be a good time to be off the roads in Klerksdorp around 5:30 in Summer.

The dual-carriageway outside the Spar (MCC) was just one wide river. I was driving Hotdog more by feel than by sight because visibility was only about two metres but at least I know that bit of road. I wondered about the wisdom of driving in this deluge when I reached the cross-roads (where there is now a robot), also a double carriage way, but Hot Dog never even murmured. I was actually starting to wonder whether the fan blades were going to start churning up the rain water from the flooded roads so I kept moving to prevent the water level building up. When I reached home, the garage doors would not open, they only opened about 50mm and then got stuck from all the rubbish that became jammed in their vertical tracks. I had to wait a while then get out and manually open the door.

I had some rain damage inside the house in January, but luckily none this time. I have thrown the gutters off and we keep the roof corners clean from leaves etc so the water did not build up this time like in January.

You should have given me a call on Monday....!!


-F_D

[Bfreesani]

I am just getting ready to do a service on Hillbilly. I have 500km to go and I miss service number 3. During the storm, my old problem with no wheel arch protection splashed enough water into the engine compartment causing wet air cleaner again. After service and some maintenance on the stools as half the team are on the way to Bloem, I am back up to Klerksdorp for another week of frustration, now with only half the labour I normally work with on the site.

[Bfreesani]

Some video we took right at the end of the storm. I think we got the edge of it where we were.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1G_Fucrjuo

[Family_Dog]

David, you definitely missed the storm! Seems my part of the world (northern suburbs) got hammered the most. Looks like the road to the Dam? The road outside my house was not even visible, there was a serious rush of water from garden wall to garden wall, like a wide river.


On another note, I see I did suffer damage inside the house, it was not evident at the time. The same two rooms that got hammered before have been hit again. The ceiling in one room is now soaking wet and the one lounge wall has got water running down behind the paint - again! The stuff has just been repaired from the previous storm. :x


-F_D

[warthog]

Reminds me: 21 Nov 1990: I was driving to work early morning thinking that the Flamboyant trees lining the streets were at their best for our mates' (who now live in Canada but was then in Klerksdorp ) visit that coming weekend.

When I went home at half past 4, there was nothing left but bare branches after "our" hailstorm. We were renting then: our garden was a basically a dump site for branches, leaves and dead birds, amongst which all our chickens and the paradise flycatcher breeding pair in the one tree.

I was at work with swambo's 1970 1200 Datsun- (my car was safely in the garage) the Datsun was the only car in the parking lot with all windows in tact after the storm. One of the office girl's parents gave her a VW Golf for her birthday a week before, only the left rear window was not broken- it was written off by the insurance, along with many more. The hail shattered furniture and toilets INSIDE the houses; a lady ran out to move her car holding a skinkbord over her head, hail shattered her finger.
If I remember correctly, we had one death: a man who suffered a heart attack on the post office's stoep as he watched while the hail destroyed his car in front of him.

We actually struck it lucky- pardon the pun- we were to move into our own place 9 days later, but because we hadn't got occupation yet, it was the seller's insurance's problem. We got a house with a brand new roof, freshly painted in- and outside

This town is still extremely nervous about dark clouds... normally takes less than 3 minutes to clear all open spaces and streets... So Eric, sterkte to you and all Klerksdorpers

[Family_Dog]

My damage was relatively minor, although I seem to find something new each day. The large roof vent in the caravan is shattered completely, so the caravan must have taken on some hail and rain. This I only found out about two days ago and all the water had already seeped out at the floor vent, which was fortunately open. Luckily, no evidence of water entry at all inside the caravan so this may have happened towards the end of the storm.

My swimming pool was blue for the first time since the storm yesterday, albeit a kind of milky blue. Better than the filthy brown that it was directly after the storm and then pea-soup green that it became. I figure by tomorrow it will be normal again.

Many people have had severe damage here, and one's heart goes out to them. I see the local rag reports that the SPCA suffered heavy damage and are in dire need of food and other assistance.

These storms never used to occur with this severity, it now seems that we are having them at least once per season, and the season has scarcely begun.


-F_D