after the hailstones..

hailstone in the size of golfball

for the second time in my life, i experienced hailstones. the first was when i was living in bandung (during junior highschool), and the second was yesterday. a freaky storm spat various sized hailstones, from the size of ice cubes to tennis balls, freaky wind and freaky rain. me and noelle lounging safely in our apartment. i was busy taking pictures and videos, my baby calmly watching her favourite kid's show at ABC.

the hailstones melt after the storm

several times i saw lightning strike the city, and the power in our apartment like goes on and off for miliseconds. our apartment carbays (with metal roofing) sounds like been thrown by rocks, and alarms from the cars on the carbays, but the owner didn't come to turn in off just in case they got hit by hailstones on the head..

broken window and fly net

i watched the hailstones from our front balcony as well as back balcony. hundreds of hailstones landed at the swimming pool, carbays, balcony, and our bathroom window.. OH NOOOOOO...

i phoned abenk, i told him not to come home during the hailstones because i saw some cars sliding wildly on cambridge street. he did wait for 30 minutes, and arrived at home about an hour later. it was supposed to be a 10 minutes drive from his office at osborne park to our apartment. turns out, herdsman parade and shelby street was flooded. lots of car got jammed and off in the middle of the flood. some SUV's like our car managed to flee the flood and safely back home, like our TReg. :)

can you see the dent?

but in the morning, we found out that our TReg got a few dents from the hailstones. hopefully our insurance cover force majeure like this.

view from our front balcony

and today, every news channel told stories about storm damage. floods, shattered windows and glasshouses, broken car windows, broken cars, fallen trees and ruined gardens, land/mudslides, and almost every traffic light in north-western perth went off so police officer forced to stand at interchange and give direction manually (just like what i saw everyday in jakarta). around 160,000 people left without electricity and many more struggling to cope with landslides and floods, and the insurance people call this storm as insurance catastrophic..

there comes sunshine after the rain..

it was the most powerful storm for more than a decade followed the driest summer ever recorded in western australia's state capital. the gauged recorded the rainfall just about 0.2mm for the last three months, and as wind and rain lashed the city last night about 40 millimetres fell in a couple of hours.