An Australian mother used her body as a shield to protect her baby from tennis ball-sized hunks of hail during a powerful storm that smashed the windows of her car.
Fiona Simpson said she was driving in Kingaroy, Queensland on Thursday with her daughter and grandmother when an intense storm forced her to pull off to the side of the road.
The hail pounded the vehicle so hard that it shattered the front and back windows, Simpson said, trapping them inside. Immediately, she reached for her baby.
“I covered my infant with my body to stop her from getting badly injured,” she said.
Simpson shared the dramatic story on Facebook with photographs of her body covered in pink and purple bruises. She urged people in the region, “Please, please be careful in this storm season.”
The extreme weather event has been described by local meteorologists as a supercell storm. A tornado also struck the region on Thursday, destroying watermelon crops and downing trees. The storm also reportedly ripped several roofs off homes and knocked birds out of the sky.
Local media have dubbed the catastrophe a “hailnado.”
Despite the harrowing experience, her daughter and grandmother are “alright,” Simpson said.
“I’ve learnt my lesson today, NEVER drive in a hail storm!” she wrote.
