Geelong, R U OK? City Cops Battering From Freak ‘One-In-50-Years’ Storm

Hey, Geelong pals. Are you ok? Everyone reasonably unscathed down there?

The Victorian city copped an almighty bashing from a batshit nuts thunderstorm that rolled slowly over the city yesterday afternoon, dropping a month’s worth of rain over the place inside an hour, causing flash floods, and generally being a bloody frightening time.
A slow-moving supercell rumbled its way over the area at around 3:35pm yesterday, following severe thunderstorm warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology that looked less like your average storm map and more like the red spot of Jupiter.

The radar imagery of the area made it look like the bonkers weather event was straight-up trying to wipe the city off the map entirely.

BoM officials stated that the storm manage to drop a staggering 42.4mm of rain in an hour – with 26mm falling in just 20 minutes – which is almost double the average amount of rainfall for the entire month of January. It was even more hectic up in neighbouring Avalon, where the most intense part of the storm centred itself for an hour, pouring a deluge of 72mm onto the airport and surrounding areas, making it a one-in-100-years weather event.
The sheer volume of rain caused widespread flash flooding across Geelong City, submerging cars and trapping 18 people in rising floodwaters, all of whom had to be rescued by the SES. In all, 486 calls were placed to the emergency response unit yesterday, with the vast majority coming from the Geelong area.


The storm then turned towards the north-east and headed for Melbourne, causing severe storm warnings to be issued for the Victorian capital.

However, conditions eased significantly by the time it arrived, with the storm cell shrinking and being confined largely to the outer western suburbs.


The clean-up from yesterday’s storm is expected to run a bill into the millions for the city, and the worst is not yet over. The BoM is again forecasting more storm activity today for the Melbourne and Geelong region, with a severe storm warning currently in effect for the city’s west, and the Geelong area.

Radar imagery shows a storm heading south-east towards the Avalon and Werribee area. Forecasters expect the storm to arrive there by around 10:30am, with the system to clear by 2pm this afternoon.
Photo: 9News Melbourne.
Source: ABC News.

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