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UPDATE: Thousands of people are still without power, hours after fierce storms swept through Victoria, gutting a house in the city’s south-east and causing havoc for morning commuters.
In Melbourne’s CBD and inner suburbs, 1762 CitiPower customers were still without power at 12.15pm, while 6517 Powercor customers in central and western Victoria were also left without electricity.
Almost 270 Jemena customers in Alphington, Williamstown and Yarraville were also still without power.
About 15,000 United Energy customers experienced blackouts about 2.30am. All but 90 in the Doncaster area had been reconnected by 12.30pm, spokeswoman Samantha Porter said.
About 800 AusNet Services customers also lost power. At 12.45pm, between 350 and 400 in the Bright, Myrtleford and Greensborough areas were still without electricity.
The storm front began its path across Victoria on Sunday night, with thunder and lightning reaching Melbourne about 2am.
Victoriians were shocked by the noise of the storm.
“It sounded like a gigantic pistol or even a shotgun being fired and amplified to wake everyone up,” said Age reader Samuel Saputra.
Heavy rain and storms continued throughout the morning, causing chaos to the train network, trapping motorists in flash floods, delaying flights at Melbourne Airport and sparking lightning fires in several areas.
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Stephen King said Melbourne recorded 26 millimetres of rain.
A house in A’Beckett Street, Prahran, was gutted by a fire sparked by lightning early on Monday morning.
Metropolitan Fire Brigade spokesman Trevor Woodward said the fire started in a tree next to the house but quickly spread to its attic.
Residents from the property and three nearby houses were evacuated during the blaze, which caused $850,000 of damage.
Metro services crumbled as the stormy conditions caused signal faults throughout the network.
Services on one section of the Upfield line were cancelled completely, while others faced significant delays as Metro used manual signalling to control the morning peak hour.
“Trains are still running, albeit more slowly than normal,” Metro spokeswoman Larisa Tait said.
“We’re working as quickly as we can to get the network back up and running as normal. Major delays are expected at this stage.”
Trams and buses experienced more crowded services than usual as commuters scrambled to get to work.
VicRoads reported up to 30 traffic light outages, fuelling tough driving conditions.
But despite its ferocious volume and the crippling effect on Melbourne’s transport system, weather bureau staff say the storms failed to meet extreme weather criteria.
The bureau had earlier warned of possible thunderstorms, which by definition include thunder and lightning.
Forecaster Stephen King said storms needed to have wind gusts of more than 90km/h, hail bigger than two centimetres or more than 25 millimetres of rain in less than an hour to qualify as extreme.
Mr King said the bureau did not warn for approaching lightning, regardless of its intensity.
Wind from Monday morning’s storms peaked at 85km/h at Horsham. And while Melbourne recorded 26 millimetres of rain, it fell over a couple of hours.
Mr King said flash-flooding in the city was confined to areas such as Dudley Street, which flooded with “pretty much any kind of rainfall”.
Melbourne Airport faced delays throughout the morning after lightning caused rolling evacuations of the tarmac.
Airport spokeswoman Anna Gillett said staff were forced to stop work on the tarmac when lightning was detected within eight nautical miles of the airport.
The latest evacuation was between 8.30 and 9am.
Ms Gillett said at 9am that the safety measures would cause knock-on delays for flights throughout the morning.
“But the airport is absolutely open,” she said.
This story first appeared in The Age
