Mom Bruised After Shielding Baby in Supercell Tornado in Australia

A young mother in Australia was covered in cuts and bruises after she shielded her 4-month-old daughter from a dangerous supercell tornado.

The massive storm ripped through southeast Queensland on Oct. 11, with reports of tennis-ball-sized hail.

Fiona Simpson was inside her car with her grandmother and baby daughter Clara when the tornado hit in Kingaroy at about 3 p.m. Thursday. The 23-year-old stopped the vehicle when the intensity of the storm made it too dangerous to press on.

“We parked on the side of the road when the storm got too heavy,” Simpson said.

Multiple media reports said the powerful storm brought high winds, hail, thunder, and tornadoes to the area, injuring five people and causing widespread damage. At least five people, including a baby and a young boy, were injured by shattered car windscreens, falling trees, and lightning strikes, Australian broadcaster SBS said on Friday.

Simpson was among those injured, 9News reported, as chunks of ice smashed her rear and passenger windows.

“The hail blew out our windows,” Simpson said in a Facebook post, and said she immediately dove to protect her baby, who was alone in the back seat. “I jumped over the back seat, over her car seat, holding my body over hers,” she told Australia’s ABC news.

Simpson said the storm was so intense that she couldn’t hear anything over its deafening roar. “I looked down and I could see she was screaming but I couldn’t even hear her, that’s how loud it was.”

The hail lashed the woman’s body, leaving cuts and bruises across her face and back. Despite her desperate attempts to shield the child with her body, she said her daughter ended up with some minor “bumps.”

The young mother posted photos of her shocking injuries to Facebook. “I’ve learnt my lesson, never drive in a hail storm,” she said.

After the storm cell passed Simpson drove to a nearby home for help. She said her whole body felt “numb” as she waited for an ambulance to arrive.

“It wasn’t until I got in the ambulance that I realised that if I didn’t do that she [her baby] could have been seriously hurt or killed, anything could have happened,” she told ABC.

“I’m just a mum, you do anything you can to protect your child no matter what, even at your own expense and I would do it again,” she said, according to ABC.

“A mother’s love can make you do the unimaginable,” commented Candice Lamb on Simpson’s Facebook post.

“God bless her ...” wrote Reid House.

Supercell Storm

Video footage obtained by Reuters showed hailstones pelting the streets of Gympie, about 160 kilometers (99 miles) north of Brisbane, and the rapid progression of a “supercell storm” in the coastal town of Rainbow Beach.

Supercells are considered to be the most dangerous of four categories of storms because of the extreme weather they generate.

Buildings were damaged and trees split as the storm moved across the region and formed a tornado that hit the town of Tansey in Gympie.

Tansey resident Greg Hellmuth said the noise from the tornado, which was forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology, was “unbelievable,” forcing his family to take shelter under a bed.

“We ran inside and everything was going sideways, all the trees were going sideways, this roof went up (in the air) and down. We went under the mattress and that’s where we stayed,” he told 9News.

The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted more storms for southeast Queensland on Friday, with up to 50 millimeters (2 inches) of rain expected.

Downpours will continue to pelt the area from Friday until at least Monday accompanied by strong southeasterly winds.