Tropical Weather.

Well haven't we had some real tropical weather here in Perth over the last few weeks. It built up over a few days thanks to a stationary trough off the west coast then exploded into 3 days of storms. I was fortunate enough to capture some of it on camera, starting with this time lapse from my back yard.

The storm then carried on for most of the night and I was able to get this great footage from my GoPro at the front of the house, unfortunately due to the housing the sound is not great.

 I took my dog for a walk the following morning and took my camera with me as it looked like another storm cell was rolling down the coast. We set up between Ocean Reef and Burns Beach and I was lucky to capture a couple of lightning strikes before the rain drove us back inside.

The following day the trough slipped inland and we had a welcome reprieve from the humidity in the form of a cooling afternoon sea breeze. I was thankful for the cooler weather but I do like the opportunity to take some good storm photos and video when it crops up.

Bullsbrook Bushfire

Last weekend I was sitting in my lounge room watching TV when I noticed a huge pall of smoke, it was enormous and darkened the sky. I could tell just by looking at it, it was out of control and would no doubt threaten homes and lives. I decided to go to a nearby park and take some pictures and video of the fire.

Strong Easterly winds spread embers well ahead of the main fire causing it to burn out of control and move at an alarming speed, hundreds of people from numerous suburbs were evacuated.

By late afternoon the fire had jumped roads and burned a huge swathe of bush-land, the pall of smoke seemed to be getting closer to my house by this time even though it was some distance away.

Overnight the winds settled down and allowed firefighters some relief but they still could not control the fire, there was an eerie orange glow in the east all night and I wondered if any houses had been lost.
The following morning my son and I went out to get some fish and the smoke cloud was still looking menacing, I took a short video with my GoPro when a willy willy of smoke,and embers separated from the main fire and moved from right to left across our view (it is just visible in the video).

By the next morning the fire was under control but still burning, miraculously no houses or lives were lost, but a few sheds and outbuildings were destroyed.