Living in crazy bizzarro world

We had a thunderstorm here last night.
That was pretty standard fare - for the past few weeks we've had one nearly every day.

This morning the weather forecast was for a top of 30C.
Again, nothing odd there - temperatures in Canberra have been consistantly around 30C all summer.

The bizzarro started as the bus drove into civic.

Which was white.

The few cracks of thunder we heard here last night had produced something a bit more tangible across the city centre - over 70mL of rain and up to a metre of hail!

The storm was at about 11pm yesterday, so it was pretty impressive to see so much ice still around under full sun, 15C conditions almost 10 hours later!


In fact, there was still so much hail around that they had brought in bobcats to clear it up.

Beyond the novelty of the city looking like it was snowed in, there was actually some really serious damage done.

Where the ground wasn't white with ice it was green with shredded leaves that had been torn from trees.

The Canberra Centre was flooded and closed for the day.

The ANU also closed its doors for the day, with 70 damaged buildings, including the skylight in the robotics lab being destroyed causing a the room to flood, and the 'recycled cardboard' of the library falling in.

Banks were closed, Dendy and Borders were closed, I even got a text message from the gym saying they would be closed on account of water damage!! (and just when I discovered we have a body jam class!)

Traffic was chaos, but that was probably the least of the car problems.

I think there were more than a couple of people who woke to find their roofs more dented and carpeted with leaves than the day before.

And then there was the other car thing...

As I was getting off the bus in the morning I bumped into a guy who works on my floor.

He offered me a lift, but I was pretty keen to take some pics, so declined.

About 15 minutes later, after a few snaps, I bumped into said guy again.
He had arrived at his car only to find it frozen to the curb.

Seriously. (that's not his up there, but you could see how it might happen...)
He said he got in, started it, and nothing happened - the wheels just span!

Eventually the temperature did reach 30C - there are some really cool shots on flickr taken throughout the day (that much ice melting to make way for 30C creates some great atmospheric mist)

The whole thing was beyond weird.
Welcome to crazy bizzaro world.....

besos =)