Heavy downpours for Australia and New Zealand

Hot, wet and windy down-under as Australasia feels the extremes of spring

Storms clear the WACA to leave perfect weather for the match between Western Australia and Afghanistan [Getty]

It’s been a mixed weekend in Perth, Western Australia with heat being followed by heavy rain. At the same time thousands of people in Auckland, New Zealand felt the brunt of stormy weather which left almost 10,000 customers without power.

Perth experienced its hottest September day on record as temperatures soared up to 34 Celsius on Saturday afternoon. That is around 15 degrees above the monthly average.

Sunday was a very different day as the passage of a cold front saw the temperature struggling to reach 22 Celsius as 36mm of rain in only 24 hours. This was actually the state capital’s wettest September day in 26 years and accounts for 42 per cent of the monthly average of 86mm.

Further east, New Zealand also had some notable weather as another weather system battered the country. There was widespread travel disruption for a time with severe weather warnings being issued advising motorists to take care in the treacherous conditions.

Severe gales with winds approaching 120kph knocked out power across Auckland on Sunday, leaving almost 10,000 customers in the dark for over 12 hours. However, there were still around 3,700 people without electricity on Monday afternoon.

Warnings remain in place for the gales and also for a spell of heavy snow over the Central Plateau over the next few hours, but conditions are expected to improve by the middle of the week.

Source: Al Jazeera