Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Well, yesterday we had the most amazing thunderstorm, the lighting flashed every few seconds and the hail was the size of large marbles.  I have never seen it rain as hard as it did, and it took Bill an hour and a half to drive home from work, compared to the usual 10 minutes.  There was street flooding everywhere and traffic was at a standstill for hours. This broke Perth's long drought, and supplied more rain than they would normally get in a month.  One friend said their spa cover blew off and tore down their neighbor's fence, another had 3 inches of water in her living room, and in areas where the hail was golf-ball size, there was lots of damage to cars. 

But, everyone assures us that this is highly unusual and no one can recall seeing a storm like this one.  I have to admit that while it was going on I was wondering if this was the norm - glad to hear it's not.  We have just finished the hottest, driest summer on record, so the weather is a bit out of whack, like most places it seems.  Our neighbors say the best months are in autumn - April, May and June.  Seems weird to think that's autumn, not spring, but we're getting used to everything being turned around.