Commuters warned of mass train delays after storm hits Sydney

Sydneysiders are being warned of significant delays on roads and public transport amid transit chaos across Sydney after a sudden storm swept through the NSW east coast on Monday afternoon.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were left without power throughout the afternoon and four people were sent to hospital after being struck by lightning in the Botanic Garden.

Train services on the T9 Northern line reopened just after 5pm – with 45-minute delays – after lightning struck signalling equipment earlier in the day, causing “significant infrastructure damage”, a Transport for NSW spokesperson said.

“T1 Western and T9 Northern will have significant delays for the evening peak [and] the T2 Inner West and T3 Bankstown Line will also be impacted by flow on delays,” they said.

The Bureau of Meteorology had issued a severe weather warning for the city, warning of flash flooding across the Greater Sydney region, with hail predicted around the Mid North Coast. But the warning was downgraded for metropolitan Sydney in the late afternoon.

Dramatic time-lapse vision captured the moment the heavens opened up over Sydney, with the city blanketed in grey clouds and torrential rain, sending city workers running for cover.

Four people were struck by lightning under a tree at the Royal Botanic Gardens, near the Opera House, as the storm hit. A spokeswoman for NSW Ambulance said paramedics were called to the gardens about 12.45pm, right when the worst of the storm was hitting the city.

Four patients – a teenage boy, a woman in her 20s, and a man and woman both in their 30s – were knocked unconscious when the lighting struck and all four suffered burns.

Two patients were taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and two to St Vincent’s Hospital in stable conditions.

Just under 8000 homes and businesses in Hornsby, Turramurra, Thornleigh and Belrose were still without power as at 5.30pm after lightning struck part of the electricity network.

Earlier in the day, about 13,000 households and businesses around Balgowlah and Seaforth were left in the dark after the storm damaged an overhead power line that ran between Beacon Hill and Allambie Heights, electricity provider Ausgrid said.

All outages were caused by lightning strikes, an Ausgrid spokesperson said. “Just like a house has a trip system … when lightning hits a part of a network it automatically trips and turns off so we can inspect for any physical damage before we re-energise,” the spokesperson said.

Ausgrid expected services to be restored to the area by the evening.

The Bureau of Meteorology said an “upper trough and series of surface troughs” were causing the city’s slow-moving thunderstorms.

Jake Phillips, a senior meteorologist with the bureau, said the storms were “coming in off the sea from the south-east and pushing in towards the north from the north-west”.

“They have dumped some pretty heavy falls,” he told 2GB, warning of further heavy rainfall across the afternoon. The rain is “likely to persist for the next little while”, he said.

The heaviest falls were recorded in Kings Langley, in Sydney’s north-west, which had 48 millimetres of rain in an hour.

As the dramatic weather unfolded, anxious fans were tracking Taylor Swift’s jet as it was approaching Sydney, though she landed safely just before 1.30pm. One runway was damaged in the storms, causing departure delays of about one hour. It has since reopened.

An SES spokesman said Castle Hill, in Sydney’s north-west, was bearing the brunt of the bad weather with multiple calls for help to flooded homes.

An automatic flash flooding alarm was triggered on Bexley Road in Earlwood.

NSW SES Assistant Commissioner Sean Kearns said falls could reach up to 100 millimetres up the coast.

“The NSW SES has prepositioned personnel throughout the region, and we are well-resourced to respond to any calls for assistance,” he said.

“I would encourage the public to follow the advice of emergency service personnel on the ground and not to drive through floodwater.”

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