04/10/2026
Thankyou for acknowledging the volunteers who worked hard to complete all 39 incidents in 26hrs. Ulladulla thanks the support received from Nowra, St George’s Basin, Batemans Bay and Sutton - we couldn’t have got to everyone so fast without you! Do drop in to a Shoalhaven SES Unit next Saturday between 10 and 2 to our Open Day.
Right now the footage is everywhere. A dark funnel crossing the main street of Ulladulla. People hanging onto a marquee that is trying to leave the ground. Someone's voice saying they've never seen anything like it.
It is extraordinary footage. Watch it.
But there is a second part of this story that will not go viral, and it is the part worth knowing.
Just after 1pm on Saturday, a tornado moved through Ulladulla on the NSW South Coast. The Bureau of Meteorology confirmed it and called it very unusual. It came out of a volatile low-pressure trough — warm humid air meeting a cold front, a thunderstorm with enough spin in it to drop a funnel.
Roofs came off. Trees and powerlines came down. Reports from the Native Cafe describe staff getting their customers inside moments before the umbrellas went.
The Bureau's Angus Hines said about 27 millimetres fell in very quick time. Then it was gone, almost as quickly as it came.
What happened next
According to the SES operational update, more than 100 calls for assistance came in across the state by 5pm on Saturday. Close to 30 of those were around Ulladulla.
An incident management team was stood up in the town. Crews came in from Nowra and the surrounding areas. The busiest units in New South Wales that afternoon were Ulladulla, Albury, Culcairn, Goulburn and Queanbeyan.
Here is the thing most people outside regional Australia do not realise.
Those are volunteers.
Every one of them. People who have jobs and families and were doing something else with their Saturday. They put on an orange vest, drove to a town that had just been hit, and climbed onto wet damaged roofs in the rain because somebody needed them to.
There was no footage of that. There never is.
This is not the end of it
Storm season in Australia runs from September through to April.
Saturday was week five.
Tornadoes here are rarer than in the United States, but they are not unheard of, and the conditions that produced this one — hot humid air, a cold front coming up from the Southern Ocean — are conditions we will see again many times before April.
What you can do
Save 132 500. That is the SES. It is the number for storm and flood damage, and most people only go looking for it when they already need it.
Triple zero if it is life-threatening.
Stay well clear of any fallen powerline. Always assume it is live.
Clear your gutters and tie down anything loose in the yard before the next one, not after.
And if you have ever thought about volunteering with your local SES unit, this is what that looks like. They are always short of people.
One last thing
Somebody in Ulladulla woke up on Sunday to a roof that wasn't there anymore.
And somebody else had already driven an hour to help them fix it.
That is the bit worth sharing.
Were you in Ulladulla on Saturday? Did you see it come through? Tell us in the comments and if an SES volunteer turned up at your place, say so. They deserve to hear it. 🌪️🧡🇦🇺
Sources: Bureau of Meteorology; NSW SES operational update, 3 October 2026; ABC News; 9News.
