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As many of you may know, or not, myself along with other members, such as Corridon, live in Melbourne, Australia. It has the reputation of some of the weirdest weather in the world, with rare climactic occurances, happening quite often.
My little anecdote for today happened on Tuesday at about 5pm, after a scorcher of a day with the mercury reaching 35 degrees celcius, the tempreture dropped 17 degrees in 5mins, to about 18. This is quite normal for a late change in weather, usually a short electrical storm will follow, and it would be just a bit cooler tomorrow. However this assumption was way off.
On the Wednesday, I woke up to not light, but not rain. I knew it had been raining since at least 3am, because I went to the toilet at that time, and it was raining. It continued to rain for the entire day, never stopping, so I had a whole day inside basically at school. As I went home on the train, My school blazer got drenched and it had to be dried for 5 hours in the drier. As I watched the weather report for today later in the news, I was greeted with news that the day had been the coldest February on record for Melbourne. A chilly maximum of 12.9, which may seem warm for American's, but coming off a day double the tempreture, it was quite a shock to the system. The average for the day was hanging around 8, however with wind chill factor, it was 5.
As I went to bed later that night, it was still raining, but this time with an increased wind.
When I woke up at about 2am, I found the power off, rain bucketing down and wind reaching speeds (As I found out later) of 150km (about 95mph). I walked out to the family room, which overlooks my backyard, and my entire patio was flooded to a depth of about 1 metre, and most of the floor inside had water all over it. The backyard was littered with branches, and half of massive beech tree had colapsed. I have a laneway behind my house, and that had flooded. The water had leaked under the fence, and formed a creek gushing down to the patio. I had only seen this happen once, when 30mls of rain fell in 2mins.
In the morning, the full extent of the storm was evident. The rain had stopped over my house, but many areas still had rain falling. Massive damage had been caused by this storm. Here are picture to show what happened.
Every single train line in the metor area (24) had trains cancelled, due to damage to the tracks, and to the trains themselves. Every single tram line was cancelled, due to the same reason. 4 out of the 9 freeway systems in Melbourne were closed, due to them being turned into rivers.
The Melbourne CBD was closed, due to immense flooding, and people were discourgaed from going to work.
Taken at about 1pm, when the city was fianlly opened.
The river that snakes though the city and suburbs broke it banks and flooded the city. Usually about 4metres lower, it rose this high.
The bay, which is usually quite calm turned into a massive 3 metres swell.
A crane fell over, in the massive winds at the MCG (Sports Staduim)
Figures from the storm:
100 million AUD dollars damage.
120mL fell in 24 hours, with 150mL over 48.
This is equivalent to about 1.5 metres of water.
Over 1000 cars were swept into either the river, or the sea.
Power is still not to 60% of the city.
Most amount of rain to fall in a 24 hour peroid, for Melbourne ever.
Wow, that was quite a post. Basically has anybody else expeirenced something like this. I'm curious.
Ok, it won't let me post pictures. I'll do them later. If somebody else from melbourne can post pictures up, will be appreciated.
This post has been edited by Clancy: 03 February 2005 - 07:20 AM
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