Australia's east coast has been smashed with a barrage of wild weather as a 'tornado' is captured on camera near Sydney
Some residents posted images of a water spout that formed near Dee Why on the Northern Beaches just after 6.30pm, while the carpark at Woolworths Neutral Bay was inundated by the downpour.
As of 7.30pm, some parts of Sydney had recorded close to 20mm of rain despite dry conditions for most of the day.
Canterbury received 19mm, while Sydney Airport had 18.2 and Terrey Hills 15.6. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said severe and slow-moving thunderstorms were detected on the radar and would linger throughout the night.
The rain brought a drop in temperatures. After parts of the city had hit highs of about 30 degrees in the early afternoon, most observation stations had dropped to about 21 degrees by 7.30pm.
Sydney's downpour came after a severe thunderstorm hit other parts of the state following warnings from the BoM about heavy rainfall, damaging winds and large hailstones for the Central West region and the Australian Capital Territory.
Flash flooding inundated the NSW town of Orange this afternoon.
"A southerly change is moving through a high-moisture environment in eastern NSW today," the BoM said.
"Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding, damaging winds and large hailstones in the warning area over the next several hours."
Canberra's strongest wind gust of 87km/h was recorded at 3.06pm.
The wet and stormy conditions came as yet another fresh batch of heatwave warnings were issued while much of the country is also set for a lashing by intense winds.
Now there might only be a small temperature difference between that of mainland Australia -42.8c but such changes of temperature gradient can result in the creation of dynamic weather as featured in this article.