Weather report

The weather certainly has been wild here. Not long after my last post the power went out across a lot of the city. Over here it was because trees had been knocked over into power lines, due to the gale-force winds. Not only was it the coldest February day on record, but it was the wettest day in recorded history; that is the wettest day in 150 years! We received 120mm rain in 24 hours (the February average is about 48 mm for the month!) Chaos was everywhere; the city was flooded, most trains and trams were cancelled, beaches swept away, students told not to come to school, roads awash. The rain and wind were strong enough to strip paint off doors. We spent a sleepless night, first unable to sleep because of the sound of the wind, then when we lost power running moving items in our flooding garage; our pump can't work without power! Then our fire and smoke alarms went haywire, and we couldn't stop them shrieking and wailing. Finally, after getting some sleep at about 7am, we discovered we would be without internet and television all day, as the cables were damaged. Disaster!! The tidy up will take many weeks, and our gratitude has to be extended to the excellent volunteer State Emergency Service, who have been working flat out for days.
There are some really scary and fantastic images here.
And you know what? It's going to be 30 degrees and sunny on Monday. Just crazy.
Here's an interesting article about how the storm will affect our fruit and seafood availability.