A Spot of Weather

I try to post something once a week, but occasionally I run out of time, ideas or both. But there has been a dry spell lately, in the weather as well as my imagination! It was broken yesterday as the heavens opened and dumped almost an inch and half of rain on Perth in less than an hour. Wind gusted to 120km (75mph) and over 150,000 Perthians lost power, some for more than 24 hours. I had a flashback to hurricane Ike as the trees swayed wildly and water swirled at each side of the road.

We had spent the afternoon playing mahjong and were on our way home when the cloudy skies let loose their barrage of precipitation. It sounded like someone was hammering on the roof of the Hyundai i30 -- thump, thump, thump -- getting faster and then slowing down. I found myself praying silently "please God, prevent the hailstones from breaking the windshield, the water level from flooding the car, and please keep us from plowing into another car."

It was a loud 15 minutes, but nothing broke and no one was hurt, although traffic slowed to a crawl and we got drenched as we ran from the car into our apartment building. My Canadian friend Ethel, a rather nervous sort, was calm as we drove through the mess of tree branches, deep water and hail stones ranging in size from moth balls to golf balls pelted everything in sight. As we turned into the parking lot and waited for the gate to open she laughed and said "this is just like driving in Newfoundland!" The laughter helped -- we needed all of our sense of humor to get out of the car and submit ourselves to a drenching as we freed several broken tree branches which had become stuck in the mechanism of the gate to the parking lot. Drowned rats ... that was us!

Thanks to Ethel I made it home safely and checked the flat. Not expecting a freak hail storm, I had left several windows open, but fortunately the winds were blowing in a different direction and the apartment was unscathed. The power went out 15 minutes later and Vince and I had a nice candlelight dinner of peanut butter and crackers, accompanied by a loud thunderous soundtrack and spectacular lightning!

Today the sun is shining and I must commend the Perth city officials and public works employees. Many of them worked through the night and by 10:00am this morning most of the mess had been cleared up. Only the flashing traffic lights, continued power outages and some very large broken branches still attest to the forceful chaos of yesterday.

We've been told to prepare for another storm tonight, which we all hope will be less severe. Here's more info for those enquiring minds. http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2010/03/23/2853482.htm  . Not all the photos here were taken by me. Several were forwarded via email and I'm unsure of the artist. Thank you, anonymous photographer :->

We'll be in Houston just 10 days from now and the weird weather will be behind us. See you soon!