Overview
- Following Thursday’s peak-hour thunderstorm, more than 11,000 homes and businesses lost power across Sydney at the height of outages as hail, heavy rain and gusts near 80 km/h swept the city.
- Public transport buckled after a Sydney Metro power fault at 6:20pm stalled trains between Crows Nest and Sydenham and shut sections of the North Shore line, though services were largely back to normal by Friday morning.
- Emergency crews logged hundreds of calls, with Fire and Rescue NSW reporting 400-plus requests for help and the SES handling 370 incidents statewide, including a tree that trapped a resident in a Hornsby home without injury.
- Forecasters warn the offshore system will drive gale-force coastal winds, large and hazardous surf and possible blizzard conditions in the alpine south, and they urge rockfishers, boaters and swimmers to stay out of the water.
- Meteorologists say cold polar air clashing with warm, humid March air fueled the outbreak and could rapidly deepen the coastal low, which may deliver one of the coldest March days in decades in the state’s southeast and even coincides with a total fire ban in the state’s far north.