Send Her Down, Hughie

What a contrast in the weather yesterday. It started off quite warm and most of the day we had thunderclouds overhead. We were supposed to get to 37 degrees C but it only reached 32.8. The drive home was interesting as most people had their headlights on and there was still plenty of daylight left. Visibility was very poor and that was due to a large bushfire about two hours drive south of Perth. Smoke meant that you couldn't see across the other side of Matilda Bay from the Kwinana Freeway, if you know a bit about Perth.

Luckily tea was almost cooked by the time I arrived home as I had to take the boy to taekwondo. I don't see any point in him training only once a week so twice it will be. In Korea he trained five times a week. It started raining before we left home but it was not really heavy although the raindrops were a decent size. Bit heavier than just drizzle. I took the umbrella from the car to the taekwondo lesson even though it wasn't raining hard enough to neccesitate its use. About 10 minutes prior to the lesson finishing it became a neccesity. Outside it was pouring as the storm hit.

I pitied those poor unfortunates who hadn't come prepared and were huddled under the verandah waiting for the rain to clear before dashing to their vehicles. No, really, I did. Not a lot mind you.

Perth roads are shocking in the wet. The Town of Victoria Park uses those yellow sodium vapour lights and you can't see any markings on the road. Not that you could see a lot of the road itself as there was a great deal of it covered in water. Drainage in Perth is abysmal and downright dangerous. I didn't go any faster than 50 km/h. Then I discovered the traffic and street lights at the Manning Rd and Leach Hwy intersection had failed. Great. Thankfully there wasn't a great deal of traffic so that was safely negotiated.

Perth itself had something like 8mm of rain overnight but Mandurah, 70km south of the CBD, but still part of Perth, had 62.2mm of precipitation. Unusually wet for January.

Quite slow on the drive into work this morning. Lot of traffic worried about driving in the rain. Nice cheap way to get the car cleaned. Needed it too.