Severe weather drenches the South West region during the first week of August

The Lower South West was drenched by a four-day downpour last week, as more than 100mm of rain bucketed down in some areas.

The South West region was told to batten down the hatches as a storm approached last Monday, when the Bureau of Meteorology released a severe weather warning for residents Geraldton all the way through to Esperance.

Manjimup, Bridgetown and Pemberton experienced a strong amount of rainfall with a total of 50mm, 37.4mm and 130mm each between Monday morning and Thursday afternoon, with roads and backyards completely flooded.

The strongest wind gust was a north-westerly of 80km/h recorded in Manjimup on Tuesday.

Manjimup recorded a temperate low of 5 degrees on Wednesday, while Bridgetown experienced the warmest day of the week in the area with a temperate high of 16.9 degrees.

And it wasn’t much drier in the rest of the South West — over the past seven days Bunbury and Harvey each recorded 51mm of rainfall, with Brunswick Junction recording 49mm.

Bunbury recorded wind gusts up to 70km/h at 5.40am last Wednesday with Carey Park recording a wind gust of 91km/h about 2am last Tuesday.

Cape Naturaliste recorded waves of up to 9m and tides across the region were also higher than forecast.

Augusta had 18mm of rain in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning, while Worsley received 20mm.