A TORNADO ripped through western NSW over the weekend, uprooting trees and tearing roofs from houses.
Bureau of Meteorology employee and self-confessed storm chaser Cameron Hines was in the right place at the right time when a tornado swept through western NSW on Saturday.
He was able to capture striking images of the tornado on his camera.
"I'd been filling in at the Cobar Bureau of Meteorology Office and on my days off was travelling to Coonabarabran to try to see snow - I'm from Queensland so we don't see much of it," Mr Hines said.
"I thought the sky in the area looked very interesting so I floated about seeing what it might come up with.
"I expected a few interesting lightning bolts, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would turn out to be a tornado, which it absolutely was."
Mr Hines was near Quambone when he saw the tornado rip through an area.
It it was later revealed the wind whipped through Armatree and Gulargambone.
"I saw it develop to the west and luckily it didn't do a direct hit on town," he said.
"I'd say at its most intense it had a width of maybe 100-200m.
"With tornadoes like this, anything in its path is affected and the pattern is such that you can have incidents where a house will be destroyed and a neighbouring one will be completely untouched. It's the luck of the draw."
Mr Hines, who has chased storms in the USA, said tornadoes were more common in Australia than people imagine.
"They are rare in winter, but we do get about 16 confirmed tornadoes in Australia every year," he said.
"Since record keeping began in NSW, not long after the First Fleet, there have been 364 reported in NSW.
"Many more would go undocumented."
Gulargambone resident Anne Hull said her family had seen the storm rip through houses on their property, "Hughenden".
"People have lost kilometres of fencing and we know of three homesteads in the area that have been flattened," she said.
Mrs Hull said the storm started at about 6pm on Saturday night with gale-force winds and hail.
"It wasn't very wide, only about 20 or 30 metres wide- it was super narrow."
She said there had been reports of crop damage in the area as well as snow in the Warrumbungle mountains.
