AN extreme weather event last Wednesday threatened residents, livestock, buildings, fauna and flora as cyclonic winds up to 120km/h were recorded in parts of Victoria.
Six races of the legacy Geelong Cup were rescheduled for the next day as power outages surged across Melbourne as wild winds created havoc bringing down hundreds of trees.
Victoria’s State Emergency Services (SES) said they fielded more than 800 calls across the state.
Kilmore VICSES Duty Officer Scott Calderwood said Mitchell Shire was fortunate.
“We were fortunate we didn’t get any calls until 3pm that afternoon,” he said.
“We ended up with eight trees down…all but one of them were on rural roads in the township of Wallan.
“The last call came in at 4.40pm and we were finished by 5.30pm.”
Mr Calderwood said the volunteers were ready to respond and assist their community.
“The first five responses were from volunteers who were available straight away and the others were able to be cleaned up later from volunteers who had finished their work days.”
Compared to metropolitan areas Mitchell Shire was lucky.
The Bureau of Meterology’s new website went live on the same day and many of its followers are disappointed.
“It wasn’t broken,” one said.
Bureau of Meteorology Acting CEO Dr Peter Stone said in a press release that the new Bureau website will make it easier for the community to access daily weather information and warnings, which are viewed more than 2.6 billion times each year.
“We designed the new website in consultation with the community to make sure it delivers the benefits people want and need,” Dr Stone said.
“We encourage the community to try some of the new features by exploring the new website from their mobile, tablet or laptop.
“Like the popular BOM Weather app, the new website’s weather map allows you to customise your experience by saving a list of your favourite locations and selecting the types of weather information that you want to see.”
The Bureau will gradually move specialist content from the ‘legacy’ website to the new website, so users of some content will see a mix of legacy and new pages.
