There was some staggering weather here yesterday - people who think Australia is sunny and warm every day (and I was certainly in that group before I came here) can get very surprised sometimes. It started off with a thunderstorm in the early morning, so I woke to blinding flashes from outside - five, six at least per rumble of thunder. After walking to the station in the rain it cleared up, and apparently reached 30C - but of course I was inside an air-conditioned office all day.
About half an hour before I left, the sky went grey, and the building got suddenly thrashed by heavy rain and gales - what the TV weathermen here call a storm cell. So I got wet again - this time very wet, as the downpour turned into a deluge that caused flash flooding in the CBD streets. My half-hour walk from Town Hall station (I didn't go over the bridge) got me as wet as I've ever been - and I had an umbrella. Although it could have been worse, I saw two Chinese girls get drenched by a taxi driving through a flooded gutter. I was going to a basketball game, but I was so wet at this point I didn't fancy sitting in a cold sports hall for a couple of hours in a wet shirt, so I went home. As I was arriving in Paddington, the rain stopped and the storm carried itself out into the Pacific. This morning, it's all sweetness in the city, and I heard on the radio that dust storms had been reported in Northern NSW. It's not all sunny and 25C every day here...
