A severe storm has cut power to tens of thousands of properties and prompted dozens of flood rescues in New South Wales.
The wild weather diverted flights, closed roads, brought down trees and resulted in an unseasonal snow storm in the Blue Mountains.
The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) said flash flooding trapped some people in their cars and homes after the storm hit Sydney and the south coast, bringing torrential rain and gale force winds.
“We’ve had, overnight, around 1,300 calls for emergency help,” SES spokesman Phil Campbell said.
“Seventy-three of those were for flood rescues, which shows it was a very dangerous situation out there.”
Superintendent Paul Johnstone from the NSW fire service said extra crews were called in to help with rescues.
“We had wires down, trees on wires, it’s an extraordinarily busy night for fire crews,” he said.
Superintendent Johnstone said lightning caused a house fire at Pennant Hills, in Sydney’s north.
About 20 firefighters fought another house fire at Guildford, but it was unclear if lightning sparked that blaze.
“This is at the height of this storm and tempest damage that we were responding to,” Superindendent Johnstone said.
“We had four fire engines respond to that fire and that house was well alight as crews arrived.”
Roads, trains and flights affected by weather chaos
In the Blue Mountains, which was devastated by bushfires this time last year, a snowstorm cut power to three major power stations and forced the closure of roads and the train line towards Sydney.
The weather bureau said the severe storm was now slowly moving up the state’s coastline towards the NSW Central Coast and Hunter region.
At Ulladulla on the South Coast, 171 millimetres of rain has fallen since yesterday morning with wind gusts of 160 kilometres an hour recorded south of Sydney overnight.
The storm caused disruptions at Sydney Airport, with delays likely to continue to affect flights today.
The airport remained open through the storm, but 32 planes diverted after crews decided it was too risky to land on schedule.
At the height of the storm, lightning forced airside workers to clear the tarmac.
An air services spokeswoman said the diversions and continuing bad weather would affect flights in Canberra and Melbourne as well as Sydney today.
Crews working to restore power to thousands
Endeavour Energy said about 30,000 properties on its network lost power in the Southern Highlands, south coast and upper Blue Mountains regions.
Spokesman Peter Payne said power had been restored to about half of those customers.
“Until we determine what the access arrangements are, and we can actually patrol those areas, it is difficult for us to give an accurate estimation at this stage,” Mr Payne said.
“We are expecting, however, that we will be working throughout the day to restore supply to all customers who’ve been affected by the storm over the past 24 hours.”
Power distributor Ausgrid, which services Sydney’s east and parts of the Central Coast and Hunter regions, said another 13,000 homes in its service area lost power.
“That number has come down a little bit to 8,000 but we do expect it’s probably going to be revised up a little bit later in the morning as we get more reports,” spokesman Anthony O’Brien said.
“The current outages that we know about are around Engadine, Kurnell, Punchbowl, as well as Petersham into the inner-west and Lidcombe, and then up into the northern beaches area around Freshwater and Allambie Heights.”
Forecaster Beck Kami said the conditions would improve later in the day, with a low pressure system moving north.
“That [the storm] has since tracked northwards to be off the Hunter coast this morning, and it’s expected to continue tracking northwards along the Hunter coast before moving off to the Tasman Sea later today,” Mr Kami said.
“As that moves off, conditions are expected to ease later today.”
Source: ABC News