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Hailstones bigger than marbles have pummelled Canterbury vegetable and grain crops, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage as thunderstorms moved up the province yesterday.
There are estimates some farmers could lose between 20 and 40 per cent of their wheat, barley and clover crops. crops.
However, orchardists and berry growers around South Canterbury do not appear to have suffered any significant damage from the hail.
Thunderstorms accompanied by intense rain and narrow belts of heavy hailstones thrashed their way up mid-Canterbury, with some observers also reporting a tornado. Hundreds of lightning strikes each hour lit up some districts.
Federated Farmers Mid-Canterbury president Michael Morrow said the hail caused "significant" damage to crops across the mid to upper Canterbury plains at a sensitive time of the season.
"A lot of fairly high-value vegetable-production crops in mid-flower have taken a fair pummelling by the sound of it, as well as wheat, ryegrass and barley crops," he told The Press.
Mr Morrow said there had been reports of up to $250,000 damage to a Mid-Canterbury farm's crops.
Crops sometimes did not recover from hail and a damaged plant was exposed to disease, he said.
Yesterday's damage was cause by probably two or three storms, said MetService severe weather forecaster John Crouch. "It's the start of the thunderstorm season in the region."
There were reports of 3cm hailstones near Cust, in North Canterbury, and 2.5cm stones near Woodbury in South Canterbury.
"These would have been big enough to knock down crops, but they appear to have missed most of the urban areas."
The thunderstorms were relatively long-lived and travelled northwest up the Canterbury Plains, where Mr Crouch said they were normal in late December and January.
The same weather patterns could also trigger tornadoes, and there had been a report of one near Springfield, 70km west of Christchurch.
The MetService is expecting more thunderstorms today at the top of the South Island, possibly with hail, and during the afternoon, in the Gisborne and northern Hawke's Bay areas.
Hail in North Canterbury in January caused more than $1 million damage to crops.
- NZPA
