The storm

At about 4.30pm yesterday Perth was hit by the most violent storm in the city's history. It had been extremely overcast all day and they had predicted thunderstorms but right up until it actually hit I still didn't even believe it was even going to rain. It had been threatening rain here for days and yet hadn't actually rained in many, many months. But then it hit and it was just crazy. Within seconds there were enormous hailstones pelting down and torrential rain. There wasn't even time to rush out and bring in signs, seating or anything, so quite a lot of shops around here suffered a fair bit of damage but miraculously Mr Sparrow survived unscathed. I shut my door within a few minutes and had hail pelting at it and building up in a pile outside like snow! Needless to say I didn't see a customer after that :)

I took most of these photos on my way home while I was stuck in traffic. Sorry for the poor quality but they were just on my phone. For about an hour during this time the sky cleared up and there was the most incredible sunset, but then the storm started up again. A lot of roads were flooded and I had to drive through some scarily deep water a few times. One amazing sight I saw was people standing out in the rain blocking off one street that was obviously flooded further down. They had put cardboard boxes across the street and were directing traffic down side streets. I thought it was just amazing that these ordinary people would go out of their way to help out like that.

Our house and garden didn't suffer much damage - our power was our for a while and we had a bit of flooding upstairs due to an open window (I told you I didn't believe it was going to rain!), but otherwise we came out of it pretty well. My parents were down in Dwellingup so we checked on their place here last night and found their beautiful garden pretty much destroyed and some windows smashed, but other people have suffered much worse damage to their home and cars.

I hope you're all doing ok out there today!