Simpson was heading home, driving from the town of Nanango on the D'Aguilar Highway with her infant and 78-year-old grandmother when it suddenly started to rain. As the weather began to worsen, preventing Simpson from even seeing the traffic lines on the road, she made the decision to pull over.
"I wasn't driving very fast because I couldn't see very well… I couldn't see in front of me, I couldn't even see the line on the road," Simpson told the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC).
The rainstorm grew more and more severe, but Simpson told the outlet that the situation really got intense after one each of her car's front and back windows were smashed to pieces from the impacts of hailstones. From that moment on, Simpson used her body to shield her child from the ice pellets, some the size of tennis balls, that were coming into the vehicle.
Photos later uploaded on Facebook by Simpson on Thursday show large welts all over her back, shoulders, arms and face.
"I've learnt my lesson today, NEVER drive in a hail storm!" she captioned the photos. "Please, please be careful in this storm season."
The South Burnett region, where Simpson was traveling, bore the brunt of three severe storms this week, two of which were super-cell storms, and two tornadoes, newspaper Western Australian reported, citing the Melbourne-headquartered Bureau of Meteorology.
Despite the damage inflicted on her vehicle, Simpson was ultimately able to drive to the nearest home and seek help as soon as the storm subsided. She told ABC that by the time the paramedics arrived, her body felt "numb."
"It wasn't until I got in the ambulance that I realized that if I didn't do that she could have been seriously hurt or killed… anything could have happened," Simpson said, referring to her daughter.
The recovering mother noted on her Facebook page that she and her daughter have returned home. Grams, on the other hand, is still at the hospital receiving treatment for severe bruising on her arms.
"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," Simpson said.
"At the end of the day all that matters is that we're alive… a car can be replaced and bruises can heal and we're just all safe right now."
— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) October 12, 2018
Aside from hailstones, the powerful storm sweeping across the region saw winds reaching 60 mph that brought down trees and power lines. According to the Independent, Queensland authorities received more than 300 calls for help as the super-cell wreaked havoc on residents this week.
