Australia Weather News

The Bureau of Meteorology's radar showed red and black, the highest rain rate possible, in parts of southern Queensland yesterday, as a narrow line of intense storms moved towards the coast, but it wasn't clear until today what damage the system had caused.

Vegetable farmers in the region's Granite Belt are assessing their paddocks after the severe storms swept through the area yesterday afternoon.

The intense storms produced hail the size of golf balls, damaging crops that were close to harvest.

Vegetable grower Tim Harslett said hail netting was damaged, as was his garden, and wildlife wasn't spared either.

"I found two dead galahs there yesterday afternoon, so the hail was big enough to knock them out, mostly superficial damage to the garden, but our crops in the paddocks all seemed to miss the major hail stones, so we were a bit lucky there," Mr Harslett said.

Mr Harslett said his family's farm is leased out to Rugby Farms and there was significant damage there, but they also have a nursery where the netting was hit badly.

"We're growing out baby plants, it got a bad pasting, the hail netting did its job over the nursery but the hail netting all needs replacing so that's very expensive."

Rugby Farms south east Queensland farm manager, Dwayne Lihou said their cauliflower patch was hardest hit.

"There'll be some that we'll just have to chop straight in, it won't survive but that's hail storms.

"Then lettuce and broccoli and our cabbage are probably hit for the next two or three weeks and we'll struggle to cut anything but after that we should be right to start again."

Another storm in the same system hit a dairy farm on the outskirts of Toowoomba and while there was pea-sized hail, strong winds ripped iron off sheds and uprooted trees.

Barry Heinemann said power was out at his property at Charlton and he had to use a tractor to power a generator to help milk his cows this morning, while farm sheds were also damaged.

"The pig sties are all right, but there's a truck shed that has lost its whole roof and there's no sign of the roof, it's the worst storm I've ever seen in my whole time of being here, I've never seen wind like it.

"It was so destructive, the rain was just going sideways."