Perth photographer Steve Yanev's shot of lightning over Scarborough, titled 'Glorious Nature at its Best'.
© Steve YanevPerth photographer Steve Yanev's shot of lightning over Scarborough, titled 'Glorious Nature at its Best'.
Perth residents witnessed an amazing display from 22,000 lightning strikes off the coast as the weekend drew to a close, but those in the South West saw a cracking 313,000 strikes across all of Sunday.

Steve Yanev saw the impending storm and wasted no time grabbing his camera and heading for the coast.

The Perth photographer and avid thunderstorm chaser eyed the Scarborough car park as the best vantage point and wasn't disappointed.

"There were many lightning strikes but it took an hour so to capture this shot," he said.

"I particularly like the lightning rods breaking through the clouds and others being seemingly cut in half by parts of the clouds. Beautiful and powerful."

The end result was a photo Yanev decided to title 'Glorious Nature at its Best' - a vista of dark skies over a churning ocean, eerily illuminated by arcs of lightning streaking down from the clouds while Scarborough's foreshore looms in the foreground.



Weatherzone meteorologist Tom Hough said cloud and ground strikes within 50 kilometres of Perth reached almost 22,000, and of those 250 were ground strikes mainly over the city.

"A band of storms that was off the coast began to impact the coast by around 6pm local time and that fizzled out by 9pm," he said.

The line of storms stretching from Bunbury up to Lancelin hit after 7pm, with 53,000 strikes recorded up to 100 kilometres away from Perth, of which "a large proportion would have been offshore".

Lightning lights up Perth’s skies
© Devon-Daliah McNeillLightning lights up Perth’s skies

Lightning crack over a Perth home.
© Perth Weather LiveLightning crack over a Perth home.
In the state's south, lightning struck about 313,000 times within a 300-kilometre radius south of Mandurah, starting early Sunday morning.

Elders Weather reported one storm that struck Bunbury at 4pm caused a burst of heavy rain, wind gusts up to 72km/h and a temperature drop of five degrees in under an hour.

"Over the South West there's still a band of thunderstorms inland that pertains to the same weather system that is affecting Perth," Mr Hough said.

He said Perth could expect more showers into the evening that could be locally heavily as the low end system began easing, with only a brief chance of showers in the South West going into Tuesday.