Weather in Australia has been playing hide and seek with the country’s states. At one end, Sydney is sweltering to a high of 40°C and on the other end, parts of Melbourne city submerged under rain water.
Heavy rains have created havoc in Melbourne leading to flash flooding in some parts of the city. This has created chaos among the travelers as a majority of highways had to shut down due to swamping streets. The hot and damp weather soon became wet when a storm struck the city during the afternoon.
The flooding also resulted in travel delays as most of the flights were rescheduled or delayed at the Melbourne airport due to low visibility which dropped to 100m along with strong gusty winds of up to 95km/h. Moreover, close to six Virgin Australia flights scheduled to reach Melbourne later tonight from other parts of the country like Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide got canceled.
Few trains were also reported delays. The flash flooding was a cause of the thunderstorms and heavy rains that bowled over Melbourne on Thursday afternoon.
Moreover, residents in the Elsternwick Canal have been advised not to enter the submerged roads after a major flooding warning was issued. The roads that have been victimized by torrential showers include the West Gate Freeway outbound Kings Way entry ramp, Albert Rd at Canterbury Rd, Queens Rd between Kings Way and York Street at South Melbourne.
Clarendon St, Centre Rd in Bentleigh East. Hawthorn Rd in Brighton East and St Kilda Rd are also badly affected due to flooding. The Sandringham line near the Prahran railway station is also shut as the train lines were drenched in rain water.
As per the weather bureau, Melbourne recorded 11.8 mm of rain while, 26 mm of showers were recorded in Elsternwick in about 30 minutes. The heaviest fall within the same time frame was in St Kilda, with 26mm of rains.
The Bureau of Meteorology has further issued thunderstorm and rain warning for Mildura, Horsham, Bendigo, Shepparton, Seymour, Maryborough, Ballarat, Geelong, Melbourne, Wodonga and Wangaratta.
Image Credit: Port Lincoln times
