SYDNEY, May 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) – A powerful cold front, descending on south-eastern Australia brought damaging winds and rain, which led to thousands of power outages and a sudden drop in temperature, in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW).
Winds between 90 and 100 km an hour, lashed much of eastern NSW, including its capital, Sydney, since yesterday.
Energy supplier, Ausgrid, displayed 50 unplanned outages, primarily in Sydney’s north and in NSW coastal city of Newcastle, which has affected 12,880 homes and sites.
NSW State Emergency Service (SES) reported over 600 calls overnight, for assistance since yesterday, primarily due to trees falling in the strong winds.
“We’ve seen most of those calls been for trees, either the trees down on roofs, trees on roads, or trees on power lines…We’d like to focus on making sure people stay away from those power lines,” NSW SES Deputy Commissioner, Daniel Austin, told national broadcaster ABC, today.
Over 500 SES volunteers have been deployed across the state to assist those impacted.
The sudden bout of cold weather has been attributed by the NSW Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), to a low-pressure system moving across eastern Australia.
The system triggered a cold snap in NSW with temperatures in Sydney plummeting to a low of eight degrees yesterday. The cold weather is expected to continue as sign of early start to winter.
The BoM forecast that the worst of the intense weather system will dissipate by Thursday.
Meteorologists from the BoM forecast a wetter than average winter, due to the La Nina weather system that persists off Australia’s north-eastern coast.– NNN-AGENCIES
