Severe storms damage Alice Springs buildings, power lines and businesses

Severe, tornado-like storms have caused significant damage in Alice Springs and parts of the Northern Territory, leaving businesses and residents assessing the impact. The weather system brought heavy rain, hail and winds of nearly 100km/h to the outback town on Monday afternoon. Reports from the area described roofs being torn from houses, trees and power lines brought down, and roads covered with leaf litter and mud.

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At the DoubleTree Hilton in Alice Springs, the storm caused extensive damage across several parts of the building. The hotel's general manager said water blew in under the front doors and poured through the ceiling above reception, affecting tenancies, a beauty salon, restaurants, a ballroom, meeting areas and back-of-house spaces. He said the guest rooms were not affected, but estimated repairs would cost more than half a million dollars.

Other local businesses have also been hit by the outages and clean-up. The Roastery, a cafe in Alice Springs, said it had to throw out thousands of dollars worth of food after widespread power cuts and a delivery on the day of the storm. Its owner said staff were documenting losses and tipping hundreds of litres of milk down the sink, adding that an insurance claim would be made.

About 20 kilometres east of Alice Springs, Undoolya Station also reported damage to infrastructure, including a lean-to that collapsed onto a house. The storm matters because it has disrupted both homes and commercial activity in Central Australia, where severe weather can quickly affect transport, power supply and business operations across large distances. The damage to a major hotel and a local cafe points to wider economic losses beyond the immediate clean-up.

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For residents and station owners, the combination of wind, hail and flooding rain has added to the challenge of dealing with infrastructure damage in a remote region. The Northern Territory is accustomed to extreme weather, but the description of the system as tornado-like underlines the intensity of the event. The reports also show how quickly a single storm can affect multiple sectors at once, from accommodation and hospitality to cattle stations and local roads.

In Alice Springs, the focus is now on repairs, insurance claims and restoring normal services after the power outages. What remains unclear is the full extent of the damage across the wider region and whether more properties or infrastructure were affected outside the locations already reported. It is also not yet clear how long repairs and restoration work will take in each case.

The next developments to watch are further damage assessments, any additional official updates on outages, and whether more severe weather is forecast for the area.

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