I was driving through the worst of it… and the scariest part of the whole thing was panicked drivers doing the stupidest shit.

There were people pulling over under gum trees in Carbrook. There’s literally branches from the gums in the middle of the road and their thought process is tree = cover from the pea-sized hail. They increased their chances of dying infinitely by parking under an something called a “widowmaker”. In strong winds.

Then on the highway there’s some people doing literally 40kph with hazards on, while other people are doing 120kph+… also with hazards on. I was doing 80’ish and just cruising with some people in a line with nice 3 sec+ following gaps and we’re FLYING past people in the left lane (who are all tailgating each other), while people are FLYING past us in the right lane (also tailgating lol). That speed differential was crazy, and tailgating in torrential rain with crappy visibility is just so so stupid. One guess as to which stereotype was the right hand lane crew.

Then back to Rocklea and there’s people parking under the flyovers and overpasses just… in the middle of the road? Like traffic has to stop and wait for someone huddling under a bridge to move so they can get past. Every servo on the way was chockers full of people parked on top of each other too. Crazy how everyone needed fuel at the same time.

My van got pelted the whole way back with little ding-dings and ting-tings and thunk-thunks of a variety of hail sizes, but not a single dent. Was definitely more scared of getting rammed by someone panicking rather than a smashed windscreen.

Well, that storm was a bit scary

Don’t you mean “very very frightening me?”

Yeah wow it was a shocker. Lights were blinking out a few times, and my printer decided to restart once. Got lucky that my PC never shut down. The number of people I saw outside during it was a shocker!

That windy.com map is really cool! Is it somehow getting data on individual lightning strikes? That’s something I really wish the BOM had on its radar!