![Storms caused significant damage in north-west Victoria, eastern SA and south-western NSW last Friday. Storms caused significant damage in north-west Victoria, eastern SA and south-western NSW last Friday.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/5Q2j7ezUfQBfUJsaqK3gfB/a98cbeb0-95d3-4f14-96b6-384aa1dcb767.jpg/r0_430_4608_3021_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
A SERIES of storm super cells has caused devastation in the Lower Murray region.
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Early estimates from the Victorian, NSW and South Australian governments suggest a damage bill to the local agricultural industry tallying in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Horticulturalists in South Australia’s Riverland and Victoria’s Sunraysia region have been particularly hard hit with damage to table and wine grapes and fruit trees especially severe.
The problems are compounded because many horticulturalists, with a high value product grown in a relatively small space, cannot get crop insurance.
There are also substantially losses in the broadacre cropping sector, with reports of 100 per cent crop wipe-outs in the Millewa region in Victoria.
The storms rolled through on Friday night, with a series of cells delivering freakish hail storms to the region, which caused the bulk of the damage. Mildura recorded 30mm of rain with the storm system.
Photos show the Sturt Highway near Lake Culluleraine in the Millewa looking like it had been covered with snow, such was the extent of the hail.
Local Millewa farmer Chris Hunt said the severity of the storm was amazing.
“You often get storms that do some damage to a particular paddock but the front that went through here has gone across a lot of acres.”
Government authorities are now attempting to get a handle on the situation before providing assistance packages to farmers.
The storm had two major bands, one basically following the path of the Murray River east from Renmark through to Merbein in Victoria. The other major front passed to the south, through southern Millewa before doing its worst damage in the eastern Millewa, through Red Cliffs in the Sunraysia and across the border into NSW and irrigation districts such as Monak and Paringi, south-east of Mildura.