Karmactive Staff
The skies opened up and the wind machines cranked to full blast across southern WA this weekend. A powerful cold front is currently barreling through Perth and surrounds, with the Bureau of Meteorology’s instruments catching westerly winds at 55-65 km/h and peak gusts reaching a whopping 115 km/h at Cape Naturaliste.
Rain gauges have collected about 40 mm in 24 hours. For weather nerds keeping score, that’s approaching the 60.8 mm two-day downpour from August 2023, which meteorologists note was the wettest since August 1994 when 67.4 mm fell.
These aren’t just numbers on a screen. Since Saturday afternoon, more than 100 Perth residents have called emergency services for help, with Mandurah and Rockingham locals making up a third of those calls. The State Emergency Service has responded to vehicles trapped in a flooded tunnel in Claremont. Several Mandurah homes now have unwanted indoor pools as floodwaters pushed inside.
At IKEA, shoppers had to dodge a damaged showroom roof, while the Mandurah Forum shopping center briefly went dark when power cut out mid-storm.
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“People in the southwest of WA experience a front as windy as this about 5 times per year,” according to the Bureau of Meteorology. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for the Western Power crews working through lightning and severe weather to restore electricity to thousands of homes.
Out on the coast, it’s getting seriously gnarly with 5+ meter swells and higher-than-normal tides making beaches and boating a bad idea right now. And for farmers already dealing with changing rainfall patterns (CSIRO data shows April-October rainfall has dropped about 16% since 1970), there’s the added stress of protecting vulnerable lambs from these cold, gusty conditions.
If you’re wondering what to do while nature does its thing:
- Get inside, away from trees and power lines
- Skip the drive if there’s water over the road (your car isn’t a submarine)
- Unplug electronics during the storm
- Call 132 500 if you need SES help
While this isn’t quite as brutal as the March 2010 storm system that knocked out power to 158,000 homes and triggered $200 million in insurance claims, it’s still nothing to mess with.
Weather experts expect conditions to ease by early Monday morning, but until then, keep your devices charged and tuned to the Bureau of Meteorology website or emergency.wa.gov.au for the latest.
