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Crazy weather in Melbourne saw a massive storm over Victoria go to sunshine a few hours later then back to rain and hail all within eight hours.

Storm over Victoria at 3.00am

Well Melbourne is well and truly living up to its reputation for having four seasons in one day. At 3am in the morning an unusually large storm covered most of Victoria with squally winds gusting at over 50 knots and heavy rain. I usually sleep through anything but the ferocity and intensity of this one must have woken most of Melbourne.

Clar skies over Melbourne

But amazingly, within six hours we had the most beautiful blue skies, sunshine and absolutely no reminder of the treacherous weather that had passed over.

Hail and rain over Melbourne

Well the blue skies didn’t last long. Just as quickly as we had magnificent weather the dark clouds started rolling in and the wintery weather returned. At first the skies looked dark and ominous but not threatening, so Anthony from our office thought it was a good time to move his car to avoid being booked by parking inspectors. Within the 10 minutes it took to move the car the rain started and gradually deteriorated to hail as the temperature plummeted.

However on a positive note it gave Anthony the opportunity to get a quick 400 m sprint back to the office to avoid being soaked. Nothing like a quick work out to get you warm and minimise the drenching

Very interesting at his mornings boot camp with the high winds, I instructed everyone to stay away from trees.

One fitmate in particular said “what is with all the safety precautions”, then 20 minutes later a loud crack and crunch sound was followed by a large branch falling to the ground.

Unfortunately many of Melbourne’s parks have suffered from our severe 10 year drought as a result of the “El Niño” weather patterns, trees have experienced stress related to the low levels of moisture in the soil.

When ever there are high/gale force winds Fitstyler either avoids any areas within close proximity to trees or cancel the session all together. Fortunately Edinbugh Gardens in Melbourne has many open areas set back from the many magnificent oak trees of this Victorian park.

This has led to a situation where many of our fine oak trees have been left in a vulnerable state and with our high winds these trees have not fully recovered from the years of drought.

Over the past six months we have however experienced above average rainfall and in some instances recorded the highest precipitation for that period.

Generally the arborists have been keeping track of the condition of the trees however the unpredictable nature of limbs falling precipitates the need to unfortunately avoid staying underneath the canopy of these magnificent living creatures.

This begs the question how these trees will fare with future droughts as their future will be directly prortionate to the money that the local councils invest in saving these trees from an uncertain future. Many of these trees go back to the turn-of-the-century when the seasons were more predictable and we had the usual rainfall over winter followed by the drier summers as opposed to having dry winters year after year.

Well after the massive hail storm last night in Melbourne who would have believed we would have this amazing morning at Boot camp.

Melbourne is definitely living up to it’s reputation of four seasons in one day or rather four extreme seasons in one day.

While there was patchy showers across Victoria, a massive hail storm moved across over Melbourne last night. There was no mention of hail storms on the weather forecasts as this storm seemed to originate from nowhere.
While I always joke about it never rains at Boot camp, I think breaking the record with hail is going a little too far:))

The temperature dropped and while I was waiting at the Rotunda with a new Fitmate, the winds increased from 15-20knots to 35-40 knots with pea sized hail voraciously dawning upon us. Well boot camp was now officially over as we ran back to our cars.

Within minutes the ground was covered in a layer of sleet and the fallen hail collecting on the windscreens like we were up at the snow. Once the epicentre of the storm based, the skies cleared and the rain subsided.

With the cool 7º temperature, the hail was in no hurry to melt with piles of hail still visible after 20 minutes.

Well done to the 8 Fitmates who braved the rainy weather to venture out. While we do have sheltered areas at our parks, it’s game over when either it hails or there is a warning for one of these extremely nasty storms.

We had a similar storm in April this year with loads of lightening and thunder, once again we canceled the session as lightening and Fitmates don’t mix.

Well today at 6.00am it was 10º at Boot camp, 24º degrees cooler than last Tuesday morning at 6.00am when we had 34.2º.
So when they talk about Melbourne having 4 seasons in a day, I would like to redub that to “Melbourne four extreme seasons in one month”

For the weekend SNOW has been forecast down to 1600 metres in the Alpine areas of Falls Creek and Mt Hotham. Definitely, very extreme weather conditions!

At least we received some much needed rain and some mosquito and fly eradication with the colder temperatures. Funny though when I arrived at 5.45am and there were dark clouds looming in the distance, I said to myself that we will be fine and it will not rain during the session. Guess what, within 10 minutes of finishing the second session from 7.00-8.00am it bucketed with heavy rain. So maybe a coincidence but I must say that it rarely rains during our sessions.

Also a big congrats to all the Fitmates who braved the earlier heavier showers to attend our morning session. Once again it’s about commitment and overcoming the fears and belief systems that hold you back.