DEEP Lead residents are questioning if a New Years Day storm that severely damaged property and livestock was a tornado.
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Farmer Matt Weidemann said he lost a shed roof, roughly three kilometres of fencing, and had several sheep die in the powerful weather front west of Stawell.
"I'm not sure the exact value of the destruction, I haven't added it all up, but there's been a fair bit of damage done," he said.
"The sheep went looking for cover and unfortunately a branch came down on a few of them. They were trapped and died. I've heard there are a few others around who also lost sheep from flash flooding.
"A bloke just up the road had hail coming through and smashed his window. Numerous fences are gone as well.
"Between me and my neighbours, we've had some very significant damage."
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Mr Weidemann said he suspected the weather event was something more significant than a regular storm.
"It all just happened in about half an hour - it was very similar to a cyclone or a tornado," he said.
"At my weather station, I registered 90 kilometre winds.
"We've got a hydrologist hopefully coming out to the property to give us a better picture of it all and a report of what happened, so that should be interesting."
Mr Weidemann said he did not have a rainfall figure, as his rain gauge rapidly filled with hail the size of 10 cent coins.
Fellow Deep Lead farmer Tim Williams however recorded 100mm across Friday and Saturday, with 60mm recorded in the worst of the storm on Friday evening.
"I could've had more, there was a lot of hail about as well," Mr Williams said.
"It knocked a bit of fencing down around the creek but I didn't have too much damage. There were just a lot of trees down everywhere."
Neighbouring farmer Mandy Field was not so lucky.
She said her and her husband had received significant damage to fencing
"It was a bit scary and crazy," she said.
"We didn't lose any livestock or anything but we lost a lot of fences.
"We've had to redo the boundary fences just to keep sheep in and stop them wandering into other paddocks. We're still sorting out a lot of internal fences.
"A few trees fell (on fences), but mainly it was just the four inches of rain in 20 minutes that wrecked the fences.
"On New Years Day, fair to say it was a pretty crap way to start the new year."
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