Motorists in South Australia were stunned when the “freakish” sight of a giant whirlpool emerged next to the highway forcing them to abandon their journeys.
South Australia’s weekend of drenching rains led to the “freakish” sight of a giant whirlpool appearing from nowhere next to one of the state’s main highways.
A motorist trying to pass the washed out road said it was like nothing he’d ever seen, and locals said the same.
Flash flooding struck large parts of the state from mid last week as a trough parked itself over South Australia delivering what has been labelled a “one-in-100 year rain event”.
Woomera, 500 km north of Adelaide and close to where the whirlpool emerged, recorded almost 50mm of rain to the 24 hours to 9am Sunday. That’s its entire average summer and autumn rainfall in a single day.
A team that had set out to put a new 4×4 vehicle through its paces in hot climate testing, found itself doing wet weather testing instead.
Head of Asia Pacific for car manufacturer Ineos Automotive Justin Hocevar said the crew were in Tarcoola testing the endurance of the yet to be laucnhed Ineos Grenadier off roader when the sun vanished and the rain took its place.
“It came in waves first. In Tarcoola it took the Indian Pacific rail line out and we sat there for three or four days before we had permission to use the road out,” Mr Hocevar told news.com.au.
“That was quite a challenging exit and then we hit the main Stuart Highway south of Pimba near the Woomera turn off.”
They found the road cut off with fast flowing water. But what was even more extraordinary was an enormous churning whirlpool right next to the highway.
“It was freakish and roaring, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and I’ve had my fair share of freakish weather events,” said Mr Hocevar.
“It was quite incredible”.
“We we’re convinced that it would take out the road so its real kudos to the engineering teams that built this highway that it was still standing.”
Indeed, it was likely a feature of the road that led to the whirlpool effect, with the flood waters being sucked through a drainage culvert beneath the road surface.
That created the effect of an emptying bathtub as the water was directed from higher ground on one side of the road to the other.
Unable to cross the swollen highway, the team back tracked to the famous Spud’s Roadhouse in Pimba – sleeping in just about any space they could.
“The next day we spoke to police and we managed to just creep through before there was any danger of the roads closing again.”
South Australia’s west coast and Yorke and Eyre peninsulas were the epicentre of the epic rain.
In Winter Springs in the Eyre Peninsula, 228mm fell in the three days to Monday morning. In Buckleboo 178mm came down and in Kimba the gauge registered 167mm.
“It is going to take a while to clean up; the whole town was under water,” Kimba Mayor Dean Johnson told the Adelaide Advertiser.
“This is a one-in-100-year event. When the rain was falling, I was in absolute awe; we are not used to seeing that in Kimba.”
Mt Ive station, north of Kimba, saw 155mm which is more rainfall than it usually receives in a year.
The system has now moved off but the Bureau of Meteorology has warned the flooding could persist as waters dumped in the north of the state find their way to the coast.
Originally published as Giant ‘freakish’ whirlpool appears on side of South Australia’s Stuart Highway
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