Thousands of homes were without power across Perth this afternoon in the aftermath of a cold front that lashed the city today.

A Western Power spokeswoman said thousands of homes had without power at different times during the day, but the number was steadily decreasing.

Midland, Upper Swan and Pickering Brook were the worst affected areas.

Many home owners are tonight counting the cost of damage caused by the storm.

A severe weather watch is in place for Canterbury today, after Christchurch was hit by freakish weather last night leaving conservatories damaged and lifting a roof off a house.

Emergency services in Christchurch were kept on their toes when lightning, thunder, rain and hail the size of golf balls hit the region shortly after 6pm. It finished just after 7pm.

MetService said that the weather watch covers the possibility of northwesterlies gusting to severe gale strength at times in inland parts of Canterbury, Otago and Southland from late Wednesday through Thursday.

Authorities battling a wildfire in the Angeles National Forest more than doubled their deployments Monday, with 700 firefighters attacking the blaze with air tankers and helicopters.

But it will probably take several more days to fully contain the fire, which has burned 3,600 acres in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Azusa, said John D. Wagner, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. He said the steep terrain made firefighting difficult. The blaze remained about 5% contained late Monday.

"It's not really accessible by foot, so we have to do air drops over the area," Wagner said.

Portugal has said it is seeking European Union help to to tackle raging forest fires, in one of the worst summers for such blazes in years.

Dozens of fires are raging in the centre and north of the country and 1,700 firefighters have been deployed.

Last week the website "Ice Age Now" posted the above graph in their article "Arctic Ice Hits Record Low!" shout global warming activists"

The graph was from the UK Met Office website and tracks monthly anomalies in NH sea ice, which clearly show ice extent recovering from the 2007 minimum.

Intrigued, I asked the Met Office for their comments and received the following reply from John Kennedy, a Research Scientist :-

"There are problems with the sea-ice data (starting early 2009 - see http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/) so we removed the links to the sea-ice extent diagrams from the web site. The diagrams should have been removed too, but apparently not. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. There are better sources for monitoring sea-ice extent, such as that produced by NSIDC.

The diagram shows monthly sea-ice extent for the northern hemisphere, plotted as anomalies relative to the long-term mean (1979-2011) for each month."

A look at the Met Office web page, that John mentions, explains :-

"03/DECEMBER/2010. The SSM/I satellite that was used to provide the data for the sea ice analysis in HadISST suffered a significant degradation in performance through January and February 2009. The problem affected HadISST fields from January 2009 and probably causes an underestimate of ice extent and concentration.

It also affected sea surface temperatures in sea ice areas because the SSTs are estimated from the sea ice concentration (see Rayner et al. 2003). As of 3rd December 2010 we have reprocessed the data from January 2009 to the present using a different sea ice data source. This is an improvement on the previous situation, but users should still note that the switch of data source at the start of 2009 might introduce a discontinuity into the record. "

About 9 percent of New York state water wells contain enough dissolved methane to require monitoring and other safety measures, according to a new study.

The research tested more than 200 wells used for drinking water across the state for the explosive gas, which is naturally occurring but can be dangerous if ignited. In 2 percent of wells, methane levels were so high that the gas needed to be vented off to avoid potential detonation.

"The research is important because it raises the awareness of the natural quality of people's drinking water," study leader William Kappel, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), said in a statement. "Well owners should work with local health departments to understand the quality of their drinking water to know if methane or other chemicals are present."

Unbelievable.It happened in West Yorkshire in Northern England. I suspect that after it happened, he not only had to replace his car window, but probably had to replace his underwear, too.

Details:

A man cheated death by seconds when a freak lightning bolt sent a tree branch hurtling through the rear of his car. Bernard Williams had just removed his gym bag from the boot during a rainstorm when the bolt hit an adjacent willow tree catapulting a 10-foot long piece of wood across the road. The branch smashed into the car's back window - directly where Bernard had been standing - and ended up in the alleyway next to the house after taking a tail light with it.

CCTV footage taken on the property's security camera shows Bernard arriving back home in torrential rain and then grabbing his gym bag before running towards the front door of the house. But just four seconds after leaving the car there is a massive flash as lighting hits the tree and blows it apart. Jagged pieces of wood flew across the road hitting the car and neighboring houses.

Bernard, 55, initially thought the explosion on Wednesday afternoon was a sonic boom but his wife Alison, who was in her car waiting to pull on the drive, saw how close he came to being killed. "If he had been stood at the car four seconds later he would almost certainly have been killed or maimed," she said.

See how it happened below.

Two young girls, one of them pregnant, were struck by lightning and killed on Sunday September 2 in the remote community of La Chumicosa on Sunday. The girls, aged 10 and 16 were sitting under a mango tree watching a football game in Olá district of Cocle. Witnesses said there had been drizzle, but no stormswhen lightning struck the tree, killing the two girls.

The local deputy who visited the scene, called for a public awareness program. to help the population understand precautions to be taken when there is thunder and lightning.

Three people died after they were struck by lightning in Rajkot district as heavy rains lashed many parts of the state, including Kutch and Saurashtra, regions on Monday.

Many parts of Saurashtra received up to 75 mm rainfall in the last 36 hours. Jamnagar recorded 65 mm, Amreli 77 mm, Junagadh 40 mm and Gondal in Rajkot 75 mm of rainfall, district control room said.

Police said Devgan Jhala (14) and his cousin Kisan Jhala (13) were working in their field at Kotda Sanghani in Rajkot when lightning struck them. The duo sustained serious injuries and were taken to Rajkot Civil hospital where they died, said Dr Harsha Patel.

In another incident, a farmer was killed by lightning when he was working in his farm in Jagdan town of the district, officials said.

Meanwhile, heavy rain accompanied by thunderstorm lashed Ahmedabad and nearby areas on Monday evening, leading to waterlogging which disrupted vehicular movement at many places.

Event Time
2012-09-03 18:23:04 UTC

2012-09-04 02:23:04 UTC+08:00 at epicenter

Nearby Cities
244km (152mi) S of Sidorukun, Indonesia
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266km (165mi) S of Gambiran Satu, Indonesia
267km (166mi) S of Srono, Indonesia
924km (574mi) SE of Jakarta, Indonesia