Owner of Rebecca’s Cafe Rebecca Nelson said the hail started when she arrived at work about 6.30am and didn’t melt for about half an hour.

And at 9.30am they were still bucketing hail out of the gutters because the hail hadn’t completely melted and had blocked it up.

“It was pretty unusual that’s for sure,” she said.

Rocksalt Cafe owner Bronwyn Mellor said she had never seen anything like it in Port Fairy before.

“By the time the sun came up the hail was still on the ground,” she said.

“It’s pretty incredible to wake up to that.”

Her business partner Sarah Jackson captured a stunning shot of hail covered Sackville Street.

Bureau of Meterology senior forecaster Richard Carlyon said Monday could turn out to be Warrnambool’s coldest Spring day since September 11, 2004 when the mercury hit 9.1 degrees. 

“It’s not what you’d expect for the first week of spring,” he said.

“It’s the coldest air we’ve seen across southern Victoria this year.”

He said strong winds had also hit the region with wind gusts of 104km/h recorded at Port Fairy about 3.30am.

“The bottom line is not much will change throughout the rest of the week….more showers, hail and strong winds and daytime temperatures struggling to reach 10 degrees,” Mr Carlyon said.