Gales tear roof off barn

Press, 26 February 1980, Page 3

Gales tear roof off barn

Timaru reporter North-westerly winds to gale force at times hit the Burkes Pass area yesterday. Mr D. W. Moyes, of Lake Tekapo, was driving towards Tekapo when the wind tunneled beneath a haybarn on Mr. A. J. Langridge’s property, Paddy’s Market. “It went up in front, of me; sheets of iron thrown about 69m into the air. It was just like birds flying around,” Mr Moyes said. I “I backed up smartly. The iron was flying across the ; paddock.” I Mr Moyes, who had I parked his car, tried to grab a piece of iron but he was blown from one side of the road to the other. He said that on his way to Mr Langridge’s holding, grit struck his car’s windscreen like a shower of hail. Later when he returned to

the area, a ploughed paddock had been almost stripped of top soil which was mushrooming up the road like a blanket of fog. “Alan said ‘for God’s sake get out of here. Something I is going to happen’,” Mr I Moves said. | Other motorists described the gusts as “shocking;” sheets of iron were tossed about like bits of paper. The freak winds struck the hinterland about 1.50 p.m. No damage was reported at Tekapo. At the Mount John observatory at Lake Tekapo the winds reached 80 knots. Burkes Pass bore the brunt of - the storm, which had eased by 4.30 p.m. Iron was ripped from people’s hands and motorists driving at 80 km/h did so well in a hail of dust and. shingle. Some damage occured in Timaru where winds Qf 60 knots were recorded.