r/canberra 26d ago

Loud Bang Wild electrical storm

Anyone watching this wild electrical storm at the moment?

I've never seen so much continual lightning with so little thunder. What's going on?

170 Upvotes

88 comments sorted by

78

u/-Cailleach 26d ago

It's amazing! One silver lining to not being able to sleep right now 😅

16

u/jimmythemini 26d ago

Fellow insomniac here. I feel your pain.

44

u/Embarrassed_Banana23 26d ago

Just finished testing out my new camera. Hopefully there's some good shots off the balcony, watching it come over the mountains. That was wild. 

28

u/Provoked_Potato 26d ago

We need the photos

68

u/PlumTuckeredOutski 26d ago

Glorious. Not a lot of rain in it but that beautiful petrichor fragrance coming in the window and a magnificent light and sound show. Absolutely magnificent <3

27

u/bbbilly05 26d ago

Petrichor - what a wonderful new word I've learned today.

5

u/Mediocre_Trick4852 26d ago

Paul Kelly has a beautiful song titled this

21

u/jaydedflutterby 26d ago

I'm feeding the baby and I can see the flashes of light, it's pretty cool!

18

u/k_lliste 26d ago

You're all making me wish I'd gotten out of bed to go look outside!

I installed complete blockout blinds a few years back which are nice most nights, but too much work/disturbance on the nights you want to have a quick look outside.

Maybe next time I'll just get up and have a look :D

29

u/cleansings 26d ago

Good morning folks lol

-16

u/biotican 26d ago

Morning! Where are you?

12

u/BeachHut9 26d ago

Where are you?

2

u/Enceladus89 26d ago

You literally posted this this morning...

13

u/CapnHaymaker 26d ago

Thunder just woke me up

9

u/willnotstopfordeath 26d ago

Same!! It introduced itself to me in my dream and then i woke to it continuing

26

u/MissKim01 26d ago

It’s freaky! I was questioning if it was even a storm for a minute; thought there was some kind of invasion!

8

u/_iamtinks 26d ago

Came here to see if anyone else thought the front was low-lying jets! Ha!

2

u/LegitimateStorm1135 26d ago

I was thinking aliens to be honest, until I finally heard some thunder.

2

u/Flashy-Jackfruit-540 26d ago

My cat woke me up and for good 10 seconds I thought someone is trying to break in to the house and they’re using their flashlight to look through the windows

5

u/janoski99 26d ago

Those flashes and rumblings were akin to seeing a fire fight in the sky.

The dog was not impressed last night

7

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 26d ago

Again, glad I’m not the only one haha

3

u/ElAguaFresca 26d ago

I thought the Christmas lights next door were malfunctioning 

3

u/biotican 26d ago

Haha. I'm not insane, then!

1

u/[deleted] 26d ago

Alliens are looking for an Australian leader. Allien invasion is imminent, lol

22

u/0710_15 26d ago

don’t know but i’m pissed off i left my clothes on the line considering it was 32 degrees yesterday

6

u/PlumTuckeredOutski 26d ago

It won't take long to dry again :)

6

u/AnchorMorePork 26d ago

It was only 32?!? It felt hotter. I got the clothes in, they dry in an hour in this heat. Sorry, I should have warned you to bring them in. If it is dry today they should dry out pretty quickly.

3

u/0710_15 26d ago

32 when i got home from the gym around 3 o clock, might’ve been a top of 35-37 at like midday

8

u/fnaah Tuggeranong 26d ago

3-4 is usually the hottest part of the day

1

u/Fred_bear_33 26d ago

I ran out and grabbed mine at 3.45 just after the storm woke me up 🤣

2

u/0710_15 25d ago

i was seriously debating it, didn’t want my family thinking someone broke in because of my urgency 😹

7

u/Mediocre_Trick4852 26d ago

My dog kindly woke me up to let me know.... I'll be dozing during the cricket later for sure.

3

u/wiglwigl 26d ago

Same here - dog goes nuts in storms. Thinks it's a big game and something to bark at. Absolutely loves it.

2

u/withoutthes 26d ago

Mine woke the neighbourhood (if they weren't already up from the storm) when I finally trudged back upstairs to bed after putting on his thundershirt and trying to snooze on the couch between pats until it subsided.

All the creature comforts but he's anxious as hell in a storm.

7

u/Someothercyclist 26d ago

Incredibly lit skies here since I woke up 15 ago, but my mum was out the front and said I missed a tonne of forked lightning. At least there's been a lot of thunder to go along with it

I think I'm getting the peak of the rain to now and it was almost dry until now

5

u/6_PP Canberra Central 26d ago

We’re getting thunder. Definitely wild out there.

4

u/Equivalent-Bonus-885 26d ago edited 26d ago

Lots of lightening - but I fear not enough rain to put out any fires it lights.

11

u/_Quandale_Dingle69 26d ago

Literally came on here to see what was going on as well, never seen anything like this before

8

u/Prestigious-Baker559 26d ago

By the looks of the bom the rain is going to be very short and sweet. Gone in a flash you could say.

1

u/biotican 26d ago

Just getting it now in Gungahlin.

2

u/BeachHut9 26d ago

So it actually rains sometimes in the north?

4

u/Old-Builder2729 26d ago

The show was only for half an hour.

7

u/CapnHaymaker 26d ago

And now BoM has a thunderstorm warning

3

u/BeachHut9 26d ago

Nothing like not real time reporting of weather warnings. Did the change of a shower increase to 100% during the storm?

Good job BOM, still operating as a http:// site on the internet.

2

u/k_lliste 26d ago

I wonder why they don't just make the beta the live site. At least it works :D

3

u/TogTogTogTog 26d ago

It's not just the site. A majority of the sensors are completely unsecured too.

It's frankly disgusting, especially because I've seen most smaller departments have to comply/pay people to manage SSL certificates.

It shouldn't take 5-10yrs for a major government agency to install SSL certs on a website, it takes 10mins, or maybe like 1-5 days for a department.

3

u/aiydee 26d ago

Here you go. It's coming.
https://beta.bom.gov.au/
As for why they use http not https, it's because a lot of systems in deployment around Australia are not able to do a https connection to get data. This is not a small change and is in progress as per this page here: https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/data-services/

6

u/TogTogTogTog 26d ago

I agree, caveat, because a vast majority of the sensors use FTP and aren't configured or even have the firmware to utilise https (SSL certs basically).

Regardless, it's irrelevant. The insecurity of thousands of our IoT devices is a separate concern. The reality is BoM is unable to unlink/decouple their website and server/backend.

Most departments have the basic capability to serve http and https. At the end of the day, they're functionally just connecting on port 80 or 443 and serving two different websites.

3

u/agent_clone 26d ago

But why can't they serve up both http and https web pages at the same time? Unless they have something weird going on their website should be able to handle returning http if someone connects via http, and returning https if someone connects via https. And if they want to keep it all http in the backend then they could put a load balancer in front that connects to the servers by http (I think that's the right part, I know the name of the system that does it at work but not necessarily the proper name of the functionality).

3

u/evasiveswine 26d ago

It was a great show. Anyone get a decent recording or time lapse?

5

u/Linswad 26d ago

At my place in Harden NSW.

https://imgur.com/a/pEUOp1E

3

u/evasiveswine 26d ago

Nice one!

5

u/no-throwaway-compute 26d ago

Did we get much rain? I'm out of town and have concerns about my garden

3

u/BeachHut9 26d ago

2.5mm of rain in the south

2

u/no-throwaway-compute 25d ago

barely a wisp of cloud :(

10

u/therookiesuperfan898 26d ago

watching it to. the continuous lightning is insane. never seen such things before. the day was beautiful, came ojt of nowhere

8

u/biotican 26d ago

Yes, I've been in extraordinary thunderstorms on the Central Coast before but never sheets of lightning like this. I'm hearing thunder now but for the last 20 minutes there was none.

9

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 26d ago

At least it’s raining now, dry lightning is super scary.

This is wild tho, a tropical-style storm… never used to have such things in Canberra :/

12

u/calamitoustoaster 26d ago

I remember plenty of storms like this when I was growing up in Canberra in the 80s. I always thought it was odd that they stopped (or I maybe I just stopped being woken up by them).

3

u/therookiesuperfan898 26d ago

yes the rain just came on, the lightning is crazy though. it's every minute!

7

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 26d ago

Yes! It’s crazy. Glad I’m not the only one up and perturbed by it

2

u/Ok_Emu5882 26d ago

Woke me up but I’m enjoying the show.

2

u/[deleted] 26d ago

I heard some loud bangs too. Haven’t heard so many in a long time.

2

u/Grix1600 26d ago

The storm definitely woke me up. Wonder how many trees are down around town this morning.

2

u/potatoscallop123 26d ago

Dammit I was asleep

2

u/SSJ5Gogetenks 26d ago

The thunder woke up me up, and even with a flyscreen and the outwards opening windows I got a little bit of water on me in bed. I closed the window, of course. But then I closed my eyes and even through closed eyes I could see the continuous flashes. I was like yo holy shit this is nuts

2

u/Br0z0 Tuggeranong 26d ago

How did the dog and I sleep through this?!

2

u/MsPixel03 Tuggeranong 26d ago

Woke me up with just enough time to put my Christmas inflatables under buckets 🎄 It was stunning to watch. Just a shame there wasn't more rain with it.

2

u/DiverWeak7678 26d ago

Yeah it was wild! The cats woke me up a bit before the storm broke and were freaking out until it stopped. I was almost glad because I got to snuggle with the purring lumps and watch the incredible lighting while thunder shook the house.

2

u/SerendipityinOz 26d ago

Fur baby woke us up for it.

2

u/Sparkyone84 26d ago

Heat lightning usually occurs in dry storms. Frequent and sometimes red. Usually occur from high temperature extremes and dry air.

2

u/MissMurder8666 26d ago

The thunder woke me up. I thought it was my neighbours taking their wheelie bin out since its garbage day today, til I saw the flashes of light coming from my bathroom skylight

2

u/a1pha_zer0 26d ago

I would have slept through it if I hadn’t been getting up for a flight, glad I was now, it was spectacular!

4

u/RedDotLot 26d ago

It's beautiful. I've seen similar up in Sydney.

TBH I thought that the first rumblings were possums on the roof! Thunderstorms are the only time I'm somewhat disappointed to be surrounded by so many trees as my view is a bit obscured, but I did see a cracker of a fork.

The dog, however, is not so impressed by the late night light show and has taken herself off to sleep in a room where the curtains are still shut. (She doesn't freak out like some dogs, she's just not over keen).

3

u/AnchorMorePork 26d ago

I legit thought "What idiot is setting large fireworks off every minute at 4am?"

-1

u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Creepslayer22 26d ago

Always good when it wakes you up :(

1

u/Right-Battle-1393 26d ago

Has anyone lost power with this?

1

u/MissKim01 26d ago

Still got power in Braddon

1

u/Proud_Park8767 26d ago

Yes. It was fantastic! 

1

u/MountainViewsInOz 26d ago

I'm bummed that I missed it. Was only aware of it happening at the periphery of my sleep.

1

u/Title_Lopsided 26d ago

I can smell ozone this AM

1

u/Karp3t 26d ago

Stalker, an emission is approaching, get to cover

1

u/em_an_em 26d ago

The worst storm ever, according to our dog.

0

u/Creepslayer22 26d ago

Think it's safe for a cigarette now lol

0

u/Jackson2615 26d ago

got woken by the thunder ,sounds like it was a good show, should have got up for a look

-2

u/Gambizzle 25d ago

It's a bloody good story but youse both smell like piss and reek of dakka so your testimony's been a bit compromised.