Blyth residents are picking up the pieces after a tornado landed in South Australia’s mid north at the height of ongoing storms on Wednesday.
Local resident Paula told ABC 891 Adelaide she had just picked up her boy from school when she looked in her rear-view mirror and saw a tornado approaching.
“I went into school, grabbed him, put him in the car, looked in the sky and I’ve just never seen anything like it,” she said.
“Just the colours in the sky, the greys and purples and the white, and it was just spinning.
“It wasn’t like a twister. It was very wide and was just turning in a very fast motion and yeah, it got a bit scary there.”
Local resident Cameron Andriskey witnessed the tornado come through.
“I was out when the hail started hitting. The hail was pretty much the size of golf balls.”
“It was like someone was throwing rocks at the roof and then the wind came and trees were going down like dominoes.
“I heard a big bang, so I ran inside and jumped under the table just in case something fell.
“I thought there was going to be huge carnage, it went on for about half an hour.”
Mr Andriskey said there was a lot of damage about.
“A fair bit of clean-up has already been done. [The] community got together pretty quickly.”
Weather conditions unprecedented: Premier
Premier Jay Weatherill said weather conditions experienced by South Australia over the past 24 hours were unprecedented.
“Two tornadoes ripping through the centre of our state, destroying not one, not two, but three elements of critical infrastructure, causing a massive change in the energy mix in the system,” he said.
“I’d like to express my view to the people living in the northern areas of the state, that we understand that this is an incredibly difficult time for them.
“We will be reaching out to them and I will be visiting the region tomorrow along with some of my Cabinet colleagues.”
Bureau of Meteorology SA regional director John Nairn said the tornados were caused by a vigorous front that brought severe thunderstorms.
“We’ve seen a vision of tornadoes, a pair of tornadoes, so we know that damage was responsible for bringing down [electricity] towers.”
Mr Nairn said storm-force winds were expected to return to South Australian gulf waters later this afternoon.
By: ABC News
PHOTO: Transmission towers that were downed by twin tornadoes near Melrose in SA’s Mid North. (ABC News: Tom Fedorowytsch)
