A short but severe thunderstorm with winds gusts of up to 91kmh wreaked havoc on parts of Yarrawonga and Mulwala on Sunday afternoon.
The storm front arrived at around 1pm with tornado like winds bringing down many trees, roadside signs, camp sites and damaging business street furniture and displays.
Local SES volunteers were inundated with 27 call outs for assistance and worked well into the evening clearing debris from the roads.
A female in her 70s was taken to hospital after being blown off her feet in the storm at the Yarrawonga Holiday Park.
The park was severely hit with two cabins damaged, an amenities block roof was blown off and a number of camp and caravan sites were damaged with an estimated bill at $200,000.
Park manager Sean Driscoll said the storm was “tornado like” and the worst he had seen.
“It came out of nowhere and I knew it was bad, seeing all the trees down, I immediately called 000. Our customers were our main priority and once we knew everyone was OK we then began the clean-up.”
Mr Driscoll said if the storm front had of happened Saturday or even at checkout time Sunday morning there would have been even more dire consequences.
“SES were here within 20 minutes and we had lots of assistance from members of the community, some we have never seen before. The support has been overwhelming and the committee of management and staff have been great, we thank everyone for their help.”
Mr Driscoll said most of the clean-up was completed by Monday evening, but a cherry picker remained in the park on Tuesday checking trees and removing loose and suspect branches.
Belmore Street businesses were also hit with umbrellas and signage damage. Pirates Treasure House’s outdoor displays were damaged and spread all the down the street as far as the Target store.
A spokesperson from VICSES said volunteers had received 385 calls for assistance in the 24 hours after the storm hit Victoria. 165 of those calls related to trees down whilst 100 were to the impacts of flooding and 89 for building damage.
Bureau of Meteorology Senior Forecaster Keris Arndt confirmed on Monday the winds as part of Sunday’s storm in Yarrawonga were mostly associated with thunderstorm activity not a tornado.
“It doesn’t look like we have seen any tornadic activity,” he said.
“These (thunderstorm winds) can be really rapid onset winds and similar in nature to tornadic damage in that the winds are very strong in a short amount of time, but generally they will come from one direction.”
Mr Arndt also said the storm brought with it approximately 300,000 lightning strikes across Victoria.
Yarrawonga initially received 6mm of rain on Sunday and a further 12.6mm on Monday morning.