Calm before storm?
It has been all excitement in Perth and the southwest the past couple of days. A cyclone from the northwest started moving in our direction and we had a cyclone watch issued on Friday with landfall expected around 2pm today. Yesterday it was changed to a cyclone warning due to hit in early evening. People everywhere have been making preparations for the storm heading our way. Although not totally unknown, cyclones don’t generally bother finding their way to Perth and the southwest of Australia. The Scientist says otherwise but I don’t recall a single cyclone watch or warning in nearly seventeen years living here. My memory isn’t so great so maybe that is one that escaped. It’s been over thirty years since Perth was hit, by Albi back in 1978, and that was a deadly one. Overnight the cyclone lost strength and we are no longer on watch or warning here. Instead we are expecting a tropical low to hit, apparently now directly aimed at Perth, and arriving late this evening. I’m guessing this is akin to the tropical storm that Hurricane Hugo turned into before it reached us in North Carolina over two decades ago. Sure, it was no longer a hurricane but it was still pretty nasty and I well remember driving home from my job at a call center late that night and having to stop because I couldn’t see in front of me. That was one of the longest drives home I ever had. So we are all in waiting and there is a certain calm around here, along with a lot of warm, humid air. To be honest, I won’t be surprised if the storm weakens so much that it totally fizzles out before it gets here and we don’t even get a good rainfall.
Totally unrelated to the cyclone, a major thunderstorm system rolled quickly down the coast yesterday and we actually got a taste of it. We’ve been lucky to get a few drops of drizzle passing through here lately, but the storm definitely made an appearance, just as I was leaving the local supermarket with several bags of groceries. Â I was totally soaked by the time I reached the car so it didn’t really matter how long it took me to get the bags into the car and return the trolley to the bay. I got home about three or four minutes later and by the time bags were in the house and I’d got out of the wet clothes, the storm was gone. The plant life in our garden is very happy.
