The roof has been ripped off a school and homes have been damaged in a "violent, but brief" storm that whipped through parts of Alice Springs with wind speeds of at least 100kph yesterday.
The storm, which hit parts of the town early Saturday evening, pulled large trees out of the ground, causing significant damage to vehicles and homes and blocking roads.
Yipirinya School, in Araluen, had large sections of the roof pulled from two of its buildings.
Speaking from the school this morning, Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said the Education Department was assessing the site and working to get the school ready for students to return.
Principal Dr Gavin Morris said the parents and guardians of students had been notified the school would be closed tomorrow.
"The last thing we want is young kids waiting for school buses that aren’t arriving," he said.
Dr Morris said the school had been "devastated" by the storm.
"We’ve suffered a significant setback yesterday afternoon in a three-minute microburst," he said.
"Multiple classrooms with significant infrastructure damage, it’s going to take a long time to get right."
'I was just terrified'
Fiona Nash was sitting in her lounge room in Araluen when a tree fell onto the roof above her head.
"All of a sudden there was an almighty wind and I thought 'gosh, it's going to blow all the windows, all the glass and everything,'" she said.
"It was only a couple of minutes which was, I think, the most scary thing, because you didn't know how long it was going to last."
Mrs Nash, who uses a walker because of a back injury, said she was lucky she wasn't seriously injured.
"In the front room there I was sitting in the lounge chair. [I was] very lucky, because the rest of the roof just caved in," she said.
"I screamed out for Graeme, my husband, because I was just terrified."
Araluen resident, Andrew Harrison, said the damage to his home was "devastating".
"The tree's through the back fence, the whole barbecue area has come down, the roof, the poles, most of the other side of the roof has been torn away," he said.
Mr Harrison said he wasn't at home at the time of the storm.
"We came home and I've seen this and I was gobsmacked, I was lost for words."
More than 1,000 residents still without power
Ms Fyles said about 1,300 residents remained without power as of 11am.
"Power and Water are working as hard as they can, they're obviously making sure the environment is safe," she said.
Alice Springs Mayor, Matt Paterson, said in a Facebook post last night that council was working "as quickly as we can" to remove trees from blocked roads.
"Goodness me, that was scary. Stay safe everyone!" he said.
Storm 'violent, but brief'
At Alice Springs Airport, forecasters observed 76kph wind gusts at 5:47pm.
However, Billy Lynch, a meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said estimated wind gusts were much stronger, likely exceeding 100kph based on the resulting property damage.
He described the thunderstorm as "violent, but brief" and said it "moved through town pretty quickly".
"We call these types of thunderstorms 'microbursts'," Mr Lynch said.
"That name in itself kind of gives you a good description of the type of impacts that it can create: it's quite localised, but [can produce] violent bursts of wind."
He said microbursts were very common through Central Australia at this time of the year, partly due to the humidity that is brought down from the tropics, combined with the dry air of the desert.
Mr Lynch said it was "just really bad luck" that it occurred over a major town centre.
It comes about two weeks after another storm pulled a roof off a home and downed powerlines in Alice Springs' southern suburbs.
