Perth's surprise storm, god mad submitted by Spoon

So it turns out after lots of hot weather the skies decided to open up and punish us for being dirty sinners.

It was apocalyptic hail and lightning and it was awesome. It did however make for the most intense drive of my life.





The following are what I encountered on my way home from work:

Half a tree had broken off and landed on the road, which I had to navigate around.

I drove past a car which no longer had a back windscreen.

I cars turn into a street which they then discovered was flooded and had to slowly move [swim] through it. The car parked on the road was submerged up to the bottom of the doors.

On the main road I take home traffic lights were out at a main intersection so that people were making their own rules about who goes when. I was actually really impressed with how well people did at this as everyone took turns akin to what you would get with traffic lights (as in this is a huge intersection and there were many cars waiting on all four sides). The rules did not apply however if you were a truck, then you can just go whenever you please.

Some traffic lights were kind enough to work until I got 20m away from another major intersection and then STARTED DYING. You know how if something's fucked they just flash amber? Yeah that didn't happen. They flashed a couple of times then rapidly lost power until they were completely off. This occurred right as I entered the intersection and it was also raining so hard I actually could not see more than 5 meters in front of me. At this point I was going about 10 kmph.

This was the same point where the rain was actually being pushed at an angle straight at me and it actually looked like the road was liquid and was moving towards me. It was extremely trippy.

Radio stations lost signals one by one. I was listening to JJJ and it cut out and 10 seconds later it came back on but to the start of a new song. What I assume what happened was that the Perth station lost its signal to the National one and quickly switched over to anything they could. This died half a song later.

Also at this point there seemed to be an almost constant thunder which had become almost ambient. And by that I mean it was directionless and seemed to be coming either from all around be or below me. As I didn't know it was actually thunder, I actually started worrying that part of my car had come loose and was dragging along the ground making the noise.

Right as I got through all the scary shit I turned onto the last big road before ours and saw four emergency trucks parked in different positions on both sides of the road (two of them being in the middle) where one of them was HOLDING UP A LIGHT POLE. These things are about 4-5 meters high and the thing was bent at the base and was being held up by this truck.

Then I got home and the internet wasn't working and my mobile couldn't make calls (but could somehow sms just fine).

Apparently my girlfriend's house has flooded and she has dents all over her brand new car.

Anyone else in Perth see some scary or unusual things today?

For those of you outside of Perth, share your tales of wild weather wreaking havoc around you.

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