Melbourne AUS records wettest day ever

[tropicana]

Thursday February 03rd 2004

A search is underway for a 14 year old schoolboy believed to have been swept under a bridge by flooding in Melbourne.

The tragedy is the latest after wild storms hit Victoria, Tasmania, NSW and south-east Queensland.
Two witnesses saw the boy - wearing a blue and red vertical striped parka and dark pants - hanging from a railing on the bridge at Skeleton Creek in Sayers Road but he was gone when they got to the spot.
Many children, given the day off from local schools because of the flooding, have lined the banks of the creek to watch the search.


A tree has crashed through the roof of a house and pinned a 10-year-old girl in her bed at Eleva Road, Healesville, north-east of Melbourne at about 4am.
The girl, who was trapped for an hour, was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition.

A man was critically injured when a tree fell on his car near Ballarat in western Victoria this morning. He has been taken to the Ballarat Base Hospital with critical injuries to his head, pelvis and a leg.

Melbourne recorded its heaviest rainfall since records began in 1856, causing flights to be diverted and stretching emergency service volunteers, who receivede more than 2500 calls.

The road into Melbourne Airport has been flooded and flights have been diverted. Trains and trams across Melbourne were trapped at stations and in depots and police urged Melburnians to stay away from the city if possible.

Thousands of homes in Sydney and parts of NSW and south-east Queensland were left without power Thursday.

Heavy rain and large hail stones pummelled parts of Sydney and the Central Coast, causing flooding, while winds of more than 90 kph brought down trees and power lines and tore roofs off buildings.

The bad weather brought tragedy too, with Sydney schoolgirl Klara Clausen, 16, killed by a falling tree during a school camp in the NSW southern highlands early Wednesday.


Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Ward Rooney said the weather was among the most extraordinary he had witnessed.

Melbourne's average February rainfall is 45.8 mm, but the city received 120 millimetres of rain in the 24 hours to 9am (AEDT) Thursday, more than for any other day in any month on record.

In Tasmania, heavy winds buffeted the north of the state, damaging homes around Devonport.

-justin-

[Aquawind]

Serious stuff..since 1856 is a pretty good record to break...

[tropicana]

Hundreds still in dark after storm

Sat February 05, 2005
HUNDREDS of Melbourne homes and businesses are still without power Saturday, 48 hours after storms battered Victoria.
More than 120,000 Victorian households were left without electricity on Thursday morning after winds of more than 100km/h brought trees down on power lines across the state.
Crews from power companies have been working around the clock to restore power, but this morning Alinta spokesman Alain Grossbard said there were still 472 Melbourne customers without power.

Mr Grossbard said most of the households and businesses still affected were in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, with some on the Mornington Peninsula also waiting to be reconnected.
Overnight crews reconnected more than 3000 customers.

Mr Grossbard asked Alinta customers to be patient. He said fresh day crews had begun working to reconnect the remaining households.
"The company really appreciates people's tolerance and patience in this matter because it has been a major task to restore power to badly affected areas - we've not experienced something like this before," he said.

Crews from Victoria's other power suppliers also worked through the night and have now reconnected most of the customers cut off by the storms.
-justin-