Weather News

Wintry Storms in the Southwest

Lachlan Maher, Sunday July 15, 2018 - 12:24 AEST

Southwestern parts of Western Australia have awed over a wintry lightshow on Saturday night as a cold front sparked thunderstorms.

A frontal system crossed into WA late on Saturday afternoon, bringing with it a series of storms stretching from Perth down to Albany. While these storms were within a rainband, a fair amount of lightning was produced, with about 3600 lightning strikes recorded. The vast majority of strikes were either cloud-to-cloud or occurred out to sea.

The storm system managed to result in some reasonable amounts of rain before it dissipated. The gauge at Perth Airport managed to pick up a total of 24mm over 24 hours, with about a third of that falling in the hour that the storms was directly overhead.

Other sites in the region recorded slightly smaller amounts, with Collie East collecting 17.8mm in total, including 8mm falling within a single hour. While these amounts were larger than the sporadic falls that have occurred so far this July, they are not record breaking.

Looking ahead into the week, there is not much possibility of storms with another front that looks to cross on Wednesday. However, a much stronger front crossing next weekend has the potential to bring about a repeat of Saturday nights weather, though it is still too far out to be a certainty.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2018

Enter a postcode or town name for local weather, or text to search the site. » advanced search

Weather News

» all stories

Generation gone with the wind

13:20 AEST A weeklong stretch of low wind power was broken on Wednesday evening, as a weak cold front marched across southern Australia. The chart below shows that the National Electricity Market (NEM) has endured a weeklong stretch of low wind generation, with wind power providing around 6% of the NEM’s electricity, down from last year’s average of 13.1% (Mon, April 15 to Wed, April 17).