Adelaide weather: Storm brings 2500 lightning strikes and causes power outage at Adelaide Airport
Thunderstorms moved across South Australia on Sunday evening, bringing thunder, lightning and a bit of rain – and knocking power out at Adelaide Airport for about an hour.
SA News
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An autumn storm descended on South Australia on Sunday, bringing more than 2000 lightning strikes, but minimal rainfall on the back of the state’s driest summer in three years.
The light show, featuring around 2500 strikes, was focused towards the south of SA as a result of a cool change.
The highest rainfall totals were recorded in the Mount Lofty Ranges between 5-8mm, while metropolitan Adelaide received around 4mm.
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Simon Timcke said the thunderstorm activity had moved towards the east but scattered showers were still expected throughout the week.
“A south west onshore airstream has embedded fronts bringing showers on and off to late Wednesday, early Thursday,” he said.
The severe weather caused a power outage in the main terminal at Adelaide Airport.
An airport spokesperson confirmed the outage occurred shortly after 6pm on Sunday due to lightning activity in the area.
Back up generators were activated but a number of services did not come back online, including security and check in services
Power is down @ Adelaide Airport. Going to make boarding a tad challenging I feel. pic.twitter.com/jPid57oeiT
— Señor Café (@kofeyh) March 5, 2023
“Power was restored by 7pm to most services, although there were delays in restoring baggage handling systems, which were restored around 8pm,” the spokesperson said.
“There were also delays to approximately 20 inbound and outbound services.”
Services returned to normal on Monday morning.
The skies will clear ahead of the weekend, with sunny conditions and 29C expected in Adelaide, while Port Augusta will reach 35C and Mount Gambier 24C on Sunday.
It comes as rainfall totals throughout the 2022-23 summer season were less than average across large areas of South Australia, making it the state’s driest summer since 2019–20.
As a whole, recorded rainfall was 23 per cent below average, after the state’s fifth-wettest spring since 1900.
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