The clouds got awfully dark yesterday afternoon. Around 3:30 the weather bureau sent out a severe weather warning for sections of Western Australia, including metropolitan Perth.
I looked out the window and decided that I should head off a little early to try to beat the storm home.
We’ve had a record heat wave in Perth this summer with what seems to be an endless string of very warm nights. The idea of some bucketing rain seemed quite attractive. Anything that would freshen things up a little would be welcome.
I headed home as quickly as my legs would pedal. The breeze was generally on my back so that made things a little faster. I almost made it.
About three kilometres from home the dark grey clouds caught up with me. That’s also when the wind became a little confused and began blowing from different directions, throwing leaves and other debris at the side of my head. A number of random gusts nearly blew me off my bike but I was nearly home so I kept going. As I turned into a major road about half a kilometre from home the wind was coming directly towards me. I was using all the strength I had to move forward. The rain started getting heavier.
Thankfully I made it home and got inside. The rain kept building and we had around ten minutes of bucketing rain.
The strange thing about this freak storm is that there were many areas of Perth that got absolutely no wind or rain. We got plenty of both but it wasn’t too damaging. Other areas has localised flooding with trees destroyed and power lines down.
A while after the rain had stopped we lost power. I had to continue cooking dinner without power. Thank goodness we have a gas cooktop. Power was restored to our home around two hours later but there are still over twenty thousand homes without electricity this morning.
My ride to work really counted today. It’s Super Tuesday, Australia’s largest ever visual bike count.
