Perth saturated as ex-Cyclone Joyce brings four months of rain in a day
Updated
The remains of ex-tropical Cyclone Joyce has dumped more than four months' worth of rain on Perth in less than 24 hours, leading to power blackouts, flooding and causing havoc for planes trying to land at the city's airport.
The conditions were caused by the remnants of ex-tropical Cyclone Joyce, which pummelled Perth with heavy rain for much of Monday.
The State Emergency Service received more than 220 calls for help overnight, and Western Power said this morning blackouts had affected about 1,300 homes, with crews working throughout the night to repair damage to its network.
The city officially recorded 96 millimetres of rain — the wettest January day since 104mm fell on the city on January 22, 2000.
The total is equal to the average rainfall for the city for December, January, February and March combined.
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Noel Puzey said coastal areas bore the brunt of the downpour.
"We've seen, at least for the Perth metro area, that Rottnest Island has had 142mm of rain, Swanbourne and Bickley more than 138mm, 96mm for Perth metro site and 118mm for Jandakot," he said.
"So there's been plenty of falls above 100mm through much of the metro area."
Relief on the way as storm moves south
Mr Puzey said the system produced wind gusts of 90kph and was this morning moving into the south-west land division.
But the system is expected to ease off this afternoon.
"The low system is now off the coast to the west of Jurien Bay and it's moving south," he said.
"It should be off Cape Leeuwin by sometime later this evening, but most of the rainfall has started to clear at least from the northern suburbs in the Perth metro area.
"The majority of the rainfall now is south of Kwinana, but also extending down to the south-west land division towards Bunbury and possibly even Busselton before it starts to ease off later this afternoon."
Wind gusts in excess of 60kph were recorded at Perth Airport late yesterday, and strong wind shear below 1,000 feet is believed to have caused problems for incoming and outgoing flights.
Topics: rainfall, weather, cyclone, perth-6000, rottnest-island-6161, bickley-6076, swanbourne-6010
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