Wild weather is causing chaos across large parts of south-eastern New South Wales, forcing grey nomads and residents alike to hunker down and wait out the storm.
The Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter regions have all been lashed by heavy rain and gale force winds, causing severe flooding and forcing the closure of a number of roads.
Any sort of travel is extremely treacherous and authorities are urging people not to venture out on the roads unless absolutely necessary, and to be extremely careful of fallen power lines and tree branches.
Emergency crews have been working in ‘cyclonic’ conditions, which has seen wind gusts in excess of 135 kilometres per hour. Three people were killed in the town of Dungog, north of Newcastle, when homes were washed off their footings.
The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reports that a school bus had been washed off a road near Maitland, and several Hunter homes had been split in half by falling trees.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) reported 119 millimetres of rainfall in the 24 hours until 9:00am at the Sydney Observatory Hill – the wettest 24-hour period since 2002.
The SES told the SMH that “unprecedented” wind gusts of up to 135kph had lashed the Hunter, with dozens of houses losing their roofs, thousands of trees down, and more than 200,000 properties without power across the state – the largest outage since 2007.
“We’ve received just under 3,000 calls for assistance [in the Sydney, the Hunter district, Central Coast and Illawarra] within a 24-hour period, which is enormous,” said SES Deputy Commissioner, Steven Pearce. “We’ve haven’t seen this sort of weather pattern, this east coast low, or one as severe as this, in years.”
Conditions are not expected to ease until tomorrow.
* Have you been affected by the wild weather? What is the worst storm you have had to endure while on the road? Comment below.
Yes, I am one who is sitting the wild weather out before I move on to my next port of call. This is the first time I have had to wait but was in Cyclone Ita 2014 and was sitting in 6″ of water but it cleared a few days later. No damage thank goodness.