On Sunday night more than 20,000 homes across Sydney and the Central Coast region were still without power following the ferocious thunderstorms that lashed the area over the weekend.
The cleanup from the storms is underway but the bad news continues as the wild weather is set to continue this week, meaning some homes could still be without power until midweek.
Our emergency crews are continuing to assess & rectify widespread storm damage to our network. Due to the extent of the damage we may not be able to restore power to all customers today. Our crews are still working to complete repairs so we can get power back to everyone safely. pic.twitter.com/KLLbNBeK1C
— Ausgrid (@Ausgrid) December 16, 2018
Emergency services and power providers have been working tirelessly to repair the damage from the storms that hit on Saturday, however, bad weather and winds continue to affect their efforts.
Since Thursday, The State Emergency Service has received 7000 calls for help with 2000 of these being on Saturday alone after trees fell on homes, cars and powerless, causing widespread outages.
Endeavour energy said that there had been 150,000 interruptions to customers’ power in the past couple of days.
We have restored power to 18,200 customers today after #SydneyStorm. Currently 6,800 customers without supply, mainly in the Hills district. Fresh crews will start tomorrow to continue repairs. pic.twitter.com/jAu350nmso
— Endeavour Energy (@endeavourenergy) December 16, 2018
Last night, Ausgrid said that there were still 13,000 homes without power while Endeavour Energy still had 6,800 homes reporting outages.
Ausgrid crews are working to repair damage to the network tonight – including at Galston where severe weather snapped powerpoles – complex repairs are impacting restoration times. For updates go to https://t.co/MxbaFPxBlK pic.twitter.com/WjbccvaAHZ
— Ausgrid (@Ausgrid) December 16, 2018
The power issues are currently affecting traffic lights and the drive to work this morning in Sydney’s North and Northwest.
SYDNEY’S NORTH & NORTHWEST: Around 19 sets of traffic signals are not working in West Pennant Hills, Dundas, Castle Hill and Cherrybrook due to a power failure. Slow down and exercise caution: https://t.co/Yut3t7BNji
— Live Traffic Sydney (@LiveTrafficSyd) December 16, 2018
According to Live Traffic Sydney, around 19 sets of signals have stopped working in West Pennant Hills, Dundas, Castle Hill and Cherrybrook due to power failure.
The Thunderstorm activity across Sydney was brought by a large moist air mass over the NSW east coast.
While the hot and muggy conditions are expected to stick around, so too are the storms with bad weather predicted to return from later today with rain a possibility for most of the week.
