The storm

Sat 6 March 2010 5:35pm by Daniel
Filed under: driving, Melbourne, News and events 

It just took almost two and a half hours to drive from Glen Huntly to Footscray. Here’s why.

Glen Huntly in the storm
Glen Huntly. The hail was bouncing off the cars.

Glen Huntly in the storm
…and the gutters quickly flooded…

Balaclava Road flooded
…but that was nothing to Caulfield North…

St Kilda Road flooded
…and St Kilda Road.

Kingsway flooded
Kingsway wasn’t pretty — much under water, traffic lights out, and lots of traffic.

Kingsway flooded
This street between Kingsway and Sturt Street/Eastern Road had a couple of cars which will have water damage.

SES in Sturt St - note hail
All was quiet at this SES building in Sturt Street. Perhaps they were all out on calls. Note the hail stacked up by the building.

(Thanks to Marita for taking some of these.)

Update 9pm: Show pictures individually.

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Comments

16 comments on The storm

  1. Ren on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 6:19 pm

    2. Depending on when those pictures were taken, we must have been right behind you, only by the time we got down that far on Kings Way, we were forced off towards South Melbourne Market because the water under the Westgate overpass was flooded chest high and no one could get through to get onto the ramp. Argh.

  2. roger on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 6:22 pm

    3. Great shots! Pretty amazing. Sandy line is suspended until further notice.

  3. John on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 6:45 pm

    4. This flooding seems to happen every time. Pretty pathetic ‘disaster management’ that the underpass at Flinders street still floods. The amount of road flooding through the CBD highlights the incompetence of Vicroads and council to not have the foresight to plan for such events. No one ever seems to learn from the past

  4. enno on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 6:49 pm

    5. Lots of hail at Flemington

  5. Frank on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 7:18 pm

    6. Was a good day to stay at home. Thanks for these pics.

  6. Konrad Talmont-Kaminski on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 7:43 pm

    7. Wow. I know that it is nowhere as dramatic as a downpour but the other week it took a train I was on two hours to travel about 8 km through the centre of Warsaw. I guess the 50 cm of snow didn’t help.

  7. Shell on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 8:24 pm

    8. Check this out – cnr of little bourke and elizabeth

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0BwVoKNFGM

  8. Jed on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 10:05 pm

    9. I was in the CBD when the storm hit today. Elizebeth St became a river and flooded the underpass at Flinders St. station as well as many CBD shops. I am glad I was wearing shorts and sandals as I had to do some calf deep wading. The hail floating in the water made it icy cold on my feet. Autumn also got a head start with the hail removing a lot of leaves from the trees. The storm must have been less intense in St Kilda as there was much less leaf debris on the ground when I got home.

  9. Andrew on Sat, 6th Mar 2010 10:56 pm

    10. Your timing was not great wast it. I was out in it. I have seen worse flooding, but not hail as large as marbles. Yesterday’s doughnut weather effect did not hold today.

  10. Toria on Sun, 7th Mar 2010 2:13 am

    11. Wow, quite some storm! I’ve seen pictures from a friend who was in the CBD area, and the water on the streets was unbelievable. Hard to plan storm drains to take that quantity of water so quickly.

  11. vaughan on Sun, 7th Mar 2010 10:17 am

    12. You lunatic! Why didn’t you turn back and decide to go to Footscray another day?

  12. Daniel on Sun, 7th Mar 2010 10:45 am

    13. Ren, yeah we must have been there roughly the same time. They diverted us onto Sturt St, had Kingsway closed at that point.

    Vaughan, we’d had a call to say M’s place in Footscray was flooding, so were trying to get there to help. Had we known how long it would take, we wouldn’t have bothered, since J had it cleaned up by the time we eventually got there. Did consider turning back, but it was chaos in all directions. In fact once we eventually got onto the freeway westbound, it was a smooth run, though the other direction looked horrible.

  13. OzSoapbox on Sun, 7th Mar 2010 8:24 pm

    14. Wow I leave Melbourne and a couple of months later this happens.

    Looks good enough to swim in!

  14. Vas the Man on Mon, 8th Mar 2010 9:38 am

    15. I caught the 6:45AM plane to work this morning. The Tullamarine Fwy northbound was flooded near the airport exit and all the cars had to go around the far right to get past. Melbourne really doesn’t handle heavy rain all that well.

  15. Phllip on Mon, 8th Mar 2010 12:03 pm

    16. I was going on a train to Moonee Ponds K mart with my friend to buy some clothes. When we got out there was hail everywhere. The train line was suspended on the Craigieburn line from Essendon-Craigieburn. I had to go on a bus to Brunswick and catch a train to Campbelfield and catch another bus ti my friends house in Tullamarine

  16. Kath Lockett on Tue, 9th Mar 2010 3:48 pm

    17. We managed to get home from our bike ride in time for the house to be pummelled harder and louder than an ACDC concert and now our freezer is full of twenty cent piece-sized samples that I’ll try and slowly use in my GnTs for the next three months or so.

    I remember reading you in my EPA days as Toxic Custard and have found you again via LadLitter!