Tornado tears through Perth's western suburbs, damaging homes and uprooting trees

Australia Broadcast Center

4 days ago

Residents say a freak tornado that ripped through Perth's coastal suburbs sounded "like a jet engine" as it fell trees and tore up the roofs of homes.
Multi-million-dollar properties were damaged and debris covered the roads in the affluent suburb of City Beach after the Wednesday-night storm the Bureau of Meteorology has now confirmed was a tornado.
The storm, which came with little warning, was detected intensifying around 5:20pm.
"[The storm] became significant as it immediately approached the coastline, so very limited scope for warning," meteorologist Jessica Lingard told ABC Radio Perth.
"[There's] a lot of damage that we've seen overnight and it does look like it was a tornado that caused the damage in City Beach."
Images and videos of a waterspout forming over the ocean were circulated in community social media pages.
Ms Lingard said it likely continued as a tornado.
"[It] maybe started off as a waterspout, then managed to make that sea-land boundary crossing and hold its steam together to produce that damage," Ms Lingard said.
City Beach resident Anita was out at the time the tornado ripped through the area but said when she returned home later that night, she was confronted by destruction.
"I can only describe it as devastation," she told ABC Radio Perth.
"West Coast Highway was covered in huge branches, which I tried to move off the road for the traffic, and the pathway was just covered.
"We were just in the direct firing line, the trees are just struck down.
"Then it moved beyond our place south-east and took off our friend's roof."
Another resident, Carlene, said she did not see the storm coming but the sound of the wind outside was "extraordinary."
"All of a sudden we heard this amazing, like, a roar, like a jet engine … the wind came through the house," she told ABC Radio Perth.
"Creating havoc outside — the next door neighbour's trees are split in half."
Damage was also reported in Perth's eastern suburb of Rivervale, but the bureau ruled out the possibility of another tornado.
"[It was] probably not a tornado through the Rivervale area, through that looks like to be more localised, perhaps something like a microburst there," Ms Lingard said.