Storm weather April 2009

The wild weather hit us in Melbourne’s south east on Wednesday 15, April 2009.
We lost power when the neighbours tree brought down the lines.

The tree that came down next door, lucky it fell away from us!
Did I say we lost power?…not all of it, we had some power. The lights were pretty dim and many electrical appliances dropped out.

I measured the voltage and it was varying around 80 volts; you could see the lights changing brightness.

The reason for this is that the power out in the street is three phase, so neighbour on one side had normal power, we (in the middle) had some and the people on the other side with the big tree had none.

The partial power is a worry, incandescent lights globes are OK but electrical and computer equipment need to be switched off at power points, in particular the entertainment system in the lounge with the Panasonic plasma TV.
We have electric HWS so for the next few days up to the weekend we had to shower at MK’s place (older daughter), cooking and heating water for washing up and making a cuppa was OK with gas cook top, oven is electric but no need for that.

You can see from the shallow root system that we have been through many droughts.

Power was restored in our street on Saturday 19th.