Like a scene from the apocalypse, the weather in South Tipperary at the base of the Galtees took an eerie turn on Tuesday, as hailstones the size of coins battered the countryside. The heavens opened, flooding areas and blocking access to homes. The hail storm caused a garda squad car to go off the road.

It was all over in just 30 minutes and it stretched over just one and a half kilometers, but on Tuesday afternoon, it was as if Skeheenarinky had been swept into some sort of time warp back to the throes of winter, as people in the area experienced a terrifying thunder and hail storm, which seemed to come from nowhere.

The weather turned so suddenly that a squad car from Cahir Garda Station went out of control and ended up in the ditch, but thankfully the Garda driving the car was uninjured.

A spokesperson for Cahir Garda Station told The Avondhu that the extreme weather came on all of a sudden, without any warning. "It was unbelievable, I've never seen anything like it," he said.

One woman told The Avondhu that the sun was shining in Cahir, but as they approached Skeheenarinky, there were huge hailstones falling. "It was like something out of another planet - pure freaky weather," she said.

A man who travelled in the area at the time told The Avondhu that there was also a river-like flood in Kilbehenny from Loughananna to the old Cork/Dublin Road.

"Over the space of half an hour, the Skeheenarinky and Galtee mountain area was saturated by heavy rain, but what was most remarkable was that, part of the Galtee mountains and an area from Brackbawn Bridge to the Black Road, was turned white by a fall of hailstone.

"These were much larger than normal hailstones and piled to a height of three to four inches along this mile of road," he reported to The Avondhu.

On Facebook, residents from the Kilbehenny area were reporting severe flooding and being unable to make it to their homes.

There was also very stormy weather in Ballylanders and thunder and lightning in Mitchelstown, but nothing as extreme as the weather that hit the area that is often protected by the great Galtees.

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