Australia Weather News

As the wet season approaches, wild weather has begun hitting Western Australia's far north, with some residents witnessing hail on a 38-degree day.

In the Kimberley town of Kununurra, residents were surprised to see hailstones hitting their lawns on Saturday afternoon. 

Meanwhile, severe wind gusts of up to 104 kilometres per hour caused damage throughout the town. 

Tanya Wilson, who works at a local caravan park, said the storm uprooted a large mahogany tree and damaged other infrastructure. 

"Our caravan awning and gazebo got absolutely trashed. There was a couple of other awnings in the park that got trashed," she said. 

While there were a number of visitors staying in the park, Ms Wilson said thankfully no-one was hurt. 

"One of the tents got absolutely demolished with the winds unfortunately, so we ended up putting [the guest] in a cabin for the night." 

Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) meteorologist Catherine Schelfhout said while storms were common in the build-up to the wet season, hail reaching the ground in the region was unusual. 

"Hail is unusual in the tropics but it does happen occasionally," she said. 

"Pretty much all thunderstorms will have hail in them.

"Part of the way lightning forms is when you get ice in the very tall clouds associated with thunderstorms … but in the tropics the air is very warm so as that hail falls to the ground it usually melts."

Ms Schelfhout said before the storm hit, the weather was sitting at about 36 degrees, which then rapidly dropped to 25 degrees. 

In 2018, hail the size of 20-cent coins hit the outback town of Wyndham for the first time in decades. 

Extreme winds hit Derby 

Meanwhile, in the West Kimberley town of Derby resident Katlyn Yeeda, known online as Derby Jetty Queen, was caught in a separate storm on Friday afternoon. 

"It came in a freakish way, it was sounding like it was coming very slowly, the lightning was hitting," she said. 

"Next thing you know, the wind, the lightning and the rain, it was crazy, everything was happening at once." 

Ms Yeeda said she had a close call with a lightning strike, while another bolt hit a tree, causing a power outage for about 2 hours. 

"Lightning struck about 15 or 20 metres away from where my sister and me were watching the rain," she said. 

"That was crazy, we just saw the lightning hit this tree and how it lit up, the flashes on the trees, that was an experience." 

Ms Yeeda, who grew up in the Kimberley, said it was unusual to experience a lightning storm of that severity in October. 

"That was unusual for lightning storm like that," she said. 

"It's not even wet season yet." 

Coming into the wet season, Ms Schelfhout said people should expect more frequent storms. 

"We expect to see more of this thunderstorm activity increasing over the coming months," she said. 

This month, BOM announced it would no longer publish a tropical cyclone outlook because historical modelling was now less reliable due to a changing climate. 

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services said it did not record any calls for assistance in the Kimberley on Saturday.