Blown away suburbs

Several of Sydney's northern and north western suburbs were nearly blown away on Saturday night. It was probably the wildest storm that I've ever seen, and it caused hundreds of trees to come down, some on houses, many across roads, and lots of them bringing down power lines.

The storms, and possibly tornadoes even, had been much forecast. I'd cancelled a Thursday bushwalk, which could have gone ahead as it happens. The weather came late.

Walking around my local streets afterwards, I surveyed the destruction. Our power is now back on, though many will have to wait another day or two. SES and electricity crews have converged on the area from all over the state, and appear to be working miracles.

Some random observations:

* As well as no electricity, there was no phone service. We used to have phones that didn't need mains electricity, and the mobile system fails at times like these because everyone's needing to make calls.

* Although none of the traffic lights were working, the traffic generally flowed far better than usual.

* Despite widespread gridlock in some areas because of trees down on main roads, there was almost no assistance from the 'Emergency Broadcaster', the ABC. Maybe in times gone by, before the vicious cost-cutting of its idealogically driven political enemies, it would have been different. Hardly a mention that anything had  happened, let alone what streets were blocked, and what else was happening where.

* Our local streets were full of talkative, friendly neighbours. There's nothing like a little adversity to bring a community together!

Hornsby - our Tornado Alley?

In January 1991 there was a short, violent storm that swept through the suburb of Hornsby and wreaked havoc. Someone described that event on the radio this morning as a tornado, and given what happened there yesterday, he suggested there was a 'Tornado Alley' operating there.

When I searched the internet for the 1991 event, I found only the violent storm, no mention of the word 'tornado', except that there was in fact a tornado around then in Hornsby, Tennessee, and also one in Hornsby Bend, Texas.

Anyway, let's go with this 'Tornado Alley' idea. Our news media need to compete with the bigger and better tornadoes that just killed several people in the US, and indeed the massive typhoon last week in the Philippines, which killed thousands and made millions homeless, and which is still the real natural disaster story of the moment. 

The local media certainly made hay with our little tornado today. Hornsby was crawling with camera crews this morning as I inspected the damage and the clean-up operations. The reporter/camera operator from the ABC distinguished himself by being particularly territorial towards me  I thought. Clearly jealous of the fine work being done by Sydney Sapiential photographing the damaged cars in the station car park, he rather rudely plonked his camera right in front of mine, and pretended I wasn't there. (ABC, lift your game, you're dealing with the big boys now!)

I'd just passed through Hornsby yesterday, and was on my way down the Pacific Highway to Pymble when a bit before 3pm a there was one of the fiercest downpours I've experienced. Visibility was shocking, and the traffic slowed to a crawl, but there was no hint of any wind. When I first heard the news of the collapsed roof at the Westfield shopping centre movie complex, I assumed it was just due to a drain blockage and water build up. But news trickled in about a swathe of damage - trees down, roofs wrecked, cars upturned or squashed under other cars, and a demountable cabin at the station, turned on its side with six people inside it. 

It turns out there was a 50m wide path of destruction, 2km long, passing through central Hornsby via the shopping centre, the library, the Hornsby Inn, the train station, and the TAFE campus. And it's been officially declared by the Meteorology Bureau to have been a tornado, rather than the 'possible mini-tornado' we were hearing about yesterday.