"Racing this home"

"I think the storm is winning..."

"Got home in the middle of the first wave"

"Storm won :( That's my backyard starting to flood. Storm drains got up to 3/4 full"

"Single hail stone stuck to my car roof"

" The hail has kicked up all the moss between my pavers. :)"

I was caught in a huge storm over Perth. Drove half of the way and sailed the rest. Streets were flooded all over the place and with the lightning going crazy many intersections were without power. Arrived home safely (thanks for opening the shed @Mrs_RB!), thankfully our home was in good shape. Seeing as we pulled the power to most of the electrical equipment due to the lightning, our only source of communication was our mobile phones. Right when I was on the phone to a colleague the phone dropped out and it was a good while before I got reception again. At this point the weather was very calm outside. I thought I’d see if I could get the Perth Weather Radar up on my phone to see what the storm was doing, this is what I saw.

eep

See that lovely clear bit in the middle? That’s where I was. See that crazy coloured bit above just covering Perth CBD? That come in about 20mins later, bringing with it more of the craziest weather I have ever seen in Perth. I also around this time got a MMS from the colleauge I was talking to earlier showing all the stained glassed windows at UWA’s heritage listed Winthrop Hall smashed. :(

Winthrop Hall Photo by frenchiephish

Heading into work this morning things didn’t seem too badly affected near home. Lot’s of signs of flooding the streets and only a few tree branches down. It was slowly becoming apparent how badly hit UWA as the roads were littered with more and more debris the closer I got. Below are my photos of some of the areas around UWA.

UWA Carpark - There's a car park here somewhere...

UWA - Pathway cleared by storm water

UWA Reid Library Lawn - There's normally a pathway here...

UWA Reid Library Lawn - Thick debris covering the Reid Library lawn

UWA Reid Library Lawn - Where the debris came from, this was a very thick foliage tree yesterday

Fallen tree at the UWA Arts building

Clock tower at UWA Winthrop Hall, didn't fair well

Nor did any North facing window for that matter...

Some more coverage of the Perth Storms around the Interwebs:

• Youtube: UWA ALVA Library Flooded
• ABC: Rain, hail, lightning – pictures from Perth’s severe storm check out the lightning hitting a crane in the CBD!
• 7 News: Nightly News 23/03/2010 check out the storm front rolling in at 1:13
• perthnow: Mudslide swamps luxury apartments
• perthnow: Gallery – Chaos as Storm Hits
• perthnow: Gallery – Perth counts cost of million-dollar storm
• Flicker matt.didcoe: UWA Storm
• Flickr tanarama: UWA Engineering Carpark and UWA James Oval
• IAAML Blog: Storm in Perth Yesterday awesome photo of the storm front rolling in

I hope everyone survived this crazy storm okay.

For those of you in the East Australian states, you’ve already switched to Daylight Savings for the 08-09 Summer. We over here in the West were due to switch to Daylight Savings on the 25th of October, but as we’re all pertrified of change it was rejected in a referendum in May earlier this year.

One small problem, your Windows based computer is still set to go forward an hour on the 25th. Microsoft were so confident that WA would vote DST in they configured Windows to switch not just for the 3 year trial but for every year.

Not to worry, Microsoft have kindly put together a website to help you undo Daylight Savings for your version of Windows. Head over to the Microsoft Daylight Savings page and follow the instructions. It’s also a good idea to print out your calendars for Home or Work before the 25th, just in case they get screwed up with preprogrammed Daylight Savings changes.

Survey can be found here: http://survey.letsmakegames.org/

The information gathered by this survey will be used to produce a Perth games industry profile document, which will summarise general characteristics and capabilities of the local industry. We want to facilitate organic and sustainable growth to help ensure a long-term future for game developers in Perth, and a clear objective assessment of the local industry is an important part of making this happen.

We want to hear from you if: you are in the industry, want to get into the industry, or even if you have left the industry. We will greatly appreciate if you could take the time to complete this survey.

Initial results will be presented at the IGDA Perth meeting tonight(!) and put a more detailed report available in a few weeks.