A VIDEO showing a car being pummelled by hail in storms that smashed the Sunshine Coast on Sunday has been shared tens of thousands of times.

Lisa Thomas, who described the storm as apocalyptic, posted the video on Facebook about 2pm on Sunday, showing a small hatchback being slammed by huge hailstones at Palmview on the Sunshine Coast.

"This just happened at home! … This is insane! House is a mess," Ms Thomas wrote.

The post has had more than 53,000 shares and has been viewed more than three million times.

Another post shows "insane" damage to her house, including smashed windows.

"So much damage in such a short amount of time," she said.

Resident Myke Thomas told media there had been "hail the size of oranges, just dropping from the sky, bouncing off cars and the roof. The whole roof is written off, the solar panels, the solar hot water system".

The storms, which swept from Chermside in Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast, brought cricket-ball-sized hail.

Insurers have declared damage from the storms as a catastrophe, with more than 5000 claims lodged by Monday afternoon, costing an estimated $40 million.

About 3000 claims were for cars, an Insurance Council of Australia spokesman said.