More than 20,000 houses have been left without any power in different parts of Australia as the ferocious storm hits on the first of December.
The torrential downpour, hail storm, and damaging wind resulted in over 300 electrical hazards and over 650 calls for an emergency in the major areas of New South Wales and Sydney within 24 hours. The speed of the gushing wind was up to 160 kilometers per hour which destroyed a lot of properties.
The storm poured only just 6.8mm of rain which was still the heaviest rainfall in the city in the last three weeks, according to Sydney’s “official” weather station at Observatory Hill.
The Government and the crews are working immensely to restore the power of the lost properties of 3500 among 22,000due to the bad weather and extreme loss.
According to Emergency services reports, more than 400 calls were received last evening within 6 pm. More than 100 of them came from the Sydney metro area only in a period of two hours.
The heavy thunderbolts and lightning could be seen across Sydney and the neighboring region with around 25000 lightning strikes. Unfortunately, the lightning hit the bell tower of the historic mansion at Ashfield in Sydney’s inner west and ablaze it with fire. It was built in 1888 and the surrounded timber at the top was ignited. The firefighters ceased the fire with half an hour of immense effort.
NSW SES Assistant Commissioner Sean Kerns said, “I know the energy providers are working as quickly as they can to address that and our SES volunteers are out there working to clean up the damage that has been done,”. He further added, “We’ve seen a lot of damage done through leaking roofs, through trees down on roads and taken out power lines, and our volunteers are out there working to clean up and make those areas safe.”
The majorly affected areas are the Hawkesbury region, Central Coast, and Hunter. However, it also affected some areas of the Blue Mountains and Western Sydney.
The sub-urban areas in the list of affected places are Londonderry Wilberforce, Ebenezer, Agnes Banks, Maroota, Lower MacDonald, St Albans, Freemans Reach, South Maroota, Yarramundi, Wisemans Ferry, Castlereagh, Grose Wold, Canoelands, Oakville, Little Hartley, Winmalee, Mount Tomah and Glenbrook.
Easing out the anticipation, Mr. Kerns said “We are in storm season. So this is the type of weather people can expect to see – wet and windy conditions with these big thunderstorms,”.
There are many posts over social media platforms regarding the storm with pictures of the huge shelf cloud, heavy lightning, and broken or uprooted trees which portrays the devastating picture of this storm.
