Candlelit Dinner - But Without The Romance

On Sunday afternoon the weather forecast was for a thunderstorm to hit Perth's northern suburbs at around 8pm. They were expecting 20-25mm of rain and the storms could hang around until Tuesday morning. Surprise, surprise but there was no storm and no rain on Sunday night.

I took the umbrella to work on Monday though. Just in case. At 4pm, when I left from work, there was an eerie light outside. And the street lights were already on. The clouds were foaming and I was in half a mind to video them. Only minutes later and it started raining and reasonably hard too. As soon as I got on the bus it started hailing. The hail was only the size you normally see though. By the time I reached my stop it had ceased raining.

The Boy and I went to taekwondo training. It's a fifteen minute drive south of our house. All of the traffic lights from Carousel Shopping Centre down to the taekwondo centre were out. We parked the car and walked to the centre. It was still dry. Within 10 minutes, before our class started, the wind was blowing fiercely and the driving rain was incredible. You could barely see house lights only a few hundred metres away. I was very glad to be commencing my training and not leaving in that weather.

Minutes later I spoke with my instructor. My words were, "All of the lights are out from Carousel to," and blooomp!! All of the lights went out. I continued, "From Carousel to here!" He sent me to the back corner for being a jinx. The lights didn't come back on. They grabbed a couple of torches and we trained in torchlight. The instructor even mentioned that "It doesn't matter if you're not doing your exercise properly as I can't see you." It would have been interesting had we been able to do sparring in the dark. I guess the risk of injury was too great however.

No rain at the conclusion of training so it was a dry walk back to the car. As I was heading home in front of the council depot near our house I thought to myself, "I'm not driving my wife's relatively new car through that." The roadway was flooded whereas just an hour and a half previously it was dry.

Water is a bit deep on the roadway.

Would a temporary bridge be too much to ask?

Someone wants to go aquaplaning.

Miky had been battling a flood in the sewing room whilst we were away and there was no power. The sewing machine had been doused in water so it will be interesting to see if it has survived. Amazingly she still managed to cook a marvellous meal of bulgogi that was hot when served. We ate dinner by candlelight but it wasn't entirely romantic. Not that having the power on would have necessarily added to the romantic aspect but I think that it may have helped.

Complete lack of power meant that The Boy got out of having to do some homework. For a kid that is still apprehensive about the dark, which has a lot to do with a horrible video on YouTube that one of his classmates showed the class, he took it pretty well. We watched a few music videos on the laptop and had an early night.

Perth had 40mm of rain overnight and 23mm came within one 30 minute period. It was only a storm but you'd think that a cyclone had hit us. Apparently there is some A$100m worth of damage that's been suffered and somewhere between 75,000 and 150,000 homes lost power. Perth is not equipped for even a little storm.

Oh yeah, it took Western Power 25 hours to return power to us. Just enough time to almost defrost the freezer.

Branch-laden power lines.

Power lines seem to attract branches.

Fallen tree.

Is this a knock-down sale?

Pedestrians watch your step.

Watch your step alright.

If you want to see some of the real damage that I didn't experience then check out the following Websites.

Perth Now - Storm could rival 2005 deluge as one of the worst to hit the State

ninemsn - Freak storm dumps on Perth

ABC - Photos

Herald Sun - Thousands in the dark as storm batters Perth, Western Australia

ABC - Damage bill mounts as storm causes chaos