THE damage from a hail storm that hit the Wheatbelt last Saturday was wide ranging, just as local farmers were starting their harvest season.
Luke Pontifex, who has a 5600 hectare farm on Kondut East Road, Kondut, had about 1600ha of his crops damaged by hail, made up of about 520ha of canola, 500ha of wheat, 300ha of lupins and 250ha of barley.
Mr Pontifex said the storm lasted about 10 minutes.
"We have a canola paddock which had about 90 per cent of it destroyed by the hail, while the wheat and barley had anywhere from 5-30pc of it destroyed," Mr Pontifex said.
"The hail part of the storm was probably only about a kilometre and a half to 2km wide, so on each side of our property, one rain gauge had 17mm while the other received about 12.5mm."
Mr Pontifex said his farm had been hit by a hail storm about the same time last year as well, with about the same amount of his crop damaged.
Cropping 5300ha over six farms, Sean Kalajzic, whose properties are north and east of Cadoux, said he was still assessing the damage but estimated that about 500ha of his crops were affected over three of his farms.
"About 50ha of our canola crop was wiped out with about 20-30pc of another 150ha of our canola also damaged from the storm," Mr Kalajzic said.
"About 20pc of 200ha of our wheat crop has also been destroyed - well, that's all we're going to claim for anyway.
"Our block that is closest to Cadoux was the one that was the hardest hit, and that's where most of our canola and wheat damage is."
The rainfall ranged from five to 50 millimetres across his properties.
"We are pretty lucky because our wheat is still quite green, so it wasn't damaged to the extent it could have been otherwise," Mr Kalajzic said.
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Having only harvested 200ha at their farm last Thursday, he now plans to relocate his harvest machinery to another block of their canola that had only received about 5mm of rain.
Prior to the storm, Mr Kalajzic said his farm hadn't been hit by hail since he returned home in 2012.
"But we have had wipeouts prior to that, although they weren't at this time of year - normally we would be affected by hail further into harvest, when the crops are riper around November/December."
Over the years, Mr Kalajzic said October rainfall at the property had varied from nothing up to 40mm, depending on the year.
Shane Booth, who also owns a 2500ha property at Cadoux, said it was the most damage his crops had ever suffered from a hail storm.
Still assessing his crops at the time of writing, Mr Booth estimated that about 60ha of his canola had been wiped out, while 20-50pc of his wheat crop had been affected by the hail over an area spanning about 500ha.
The storm hit Mr Booth's property at about 1.30pm on Saturday and persisted for 45 minutes.
"It was very slow moving, but the angle it came through meant it hit a lot of our farm," Mr Booth said.
"We have about 1500ha of wheat and maybe one third of that has been impacted, but it's a bit hard to assess all of the damage just yet as there are a few places where we've had a bit of trouble getting the ute through because of the water, but that should dry up pretty quick."
South Cadoux (Manmanning) farmer Stewart Avery, who crops 4000ha, said about 90pc of a 360ha block of canola was destroyed by hail.
"The storm then crossed the road and we had another 180ha of our canola which was a little bit greener but was still affected - maybe 40-50pc of it," Mr Avery said.
He said the storms were isolated, with no rain on his home farm, while other parts of his property received 7-25mm.
"Fortunately we've never been affected by hail before, so this will be our first claim," Mr Avery said.
Having harvested only 130ha of his oat crop before the storm, he will wait until the crop damage has been assessed before continuing harvest.
"Hopefully we will have dry weather from now on so we get through harvest," he said.
"Fortunately the rest of the crops look like they are going to be amazing."
Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Jessica Lingard said at about 10am on Saturday there was a line of isolated storms extending from an area south of the Lake Grace area extending out towards Norseman in the Goldfields which stretched about 250km across and slowly moved south towards the Ravensthorpe and Esperance regions.
"We also had some more storms develop around Southern Cross around midday and also up around Dalwallinu as well," Ms Lingard said.
"So there was quite an extensive area of isolated thunderstorms - the width of the storms were about 670km across, east to west, and extending a similar distance north to south."
The bureau said the isolated thunderstorms affected a lot of the agricultural region in the Wheatbelt, extending from Dalwallinu to Katanning and then eastwards towards Esperance, Salmon Gums, Norseman and out towards Southern Cross.
However Ms Lingard said it wasn't typical to have hail storms in the region this late in the year.
The average rainfall for the Wheatbelt region was in the order of 15-20mm when the cold front hit on Saturday, while the highest rainfall was recorded in the Esperance area, where there was about 50-70mm of rain.
With a trough developing down the west coast this weekend, Ms Lingard said temperatures would increase in the Wheatbelt, with Narrogin expected to hit 33 degrees on Friday.
"Then that trough starts to move inland, so it will cool a little bit over the weekend, but the temperature should still hang around the mid to high 20s," Ms Lingard said.
"A little bit further south there will be very similar conditions - Katanning will be heading for 28 degrees on Friday and then cooling off.
"There might be a little bit of rainfall around the southern parts of the agricultural region, but it is expected to be less than 1mm, with no thunderstorms expected, so for the most part it is going to be a dry week."
