Stormville

So, a few hours after having chilled out and watched the sun go down on the beach (in the last post) we got hit by the mother of all storms.

This pic was taken by a local photographer, Grahame Kelaher, about 10km from us to the south, so those lightning strikes were the ones over our head!

We got woken up at 2am by lightning like I’ve never seen before – a strike every second or two and the noise, amplified by the flat surface of the ocean, was unbelievable.

The strikes were getting pretty close, the thunder taking on that tearing splitting quality of a direct hit in the local vicinity.

Then BOOM

One right overhead.  I really thought it hit the house it was so loud – the smell of ozone was overpowering which meant it was only metres away at the most.  I leapt out of bed to check we still had a roof.

Then another one, the same deal, right ontop of us.  Closer if anything and that smell again.  The family surfaced, scared.  I was worried that we’d actually been hit but due to the proximity of the strikes was reluctant to go out to check.  There was no sign of fire, which was encouraging.

Then the rain came down.

And boy, did it come down hard.

I heard that someone recorded 115mm of rain between 2am and 9am. Thats a lot.

Anyway, the lightning started to move away a little, so I recorded a snippet of the rain and the lightning so you could all see.

The next day, it was clear that the house was ok, no leaks, no hits – Jay phoned me to tell me the side fence was down – 25 panels in all had cracked in the wind 😦

Hopefully we’ll not get another storm like that this year.

*post feature image from Perth Now