Beachside suburbs have been made over as winter wonderlands after a destructive hailstorm blanketed much of Sydney and the Blue Mountains with ice.
Firefighters were expected to spend much of the night mopping up at Huntingwood, in Sydney's southwest, where five large factory buildings were brought down by the weight of up to half a metre of hailstones.
Superintendent Paul Johnstone of NSW Fire & Rescue told AAP that what was originally thought to be a smoking blaze was in fact a plume of dust sent up in the collapse.
Seven people were at the complex but made it out without any serious injuries.
After an Anzac Day on which thousands of commemorators lined Sydney streets under blue skies, social media sites lit up as Sydneysiders returned home to gardens blanketed by large hailstones and sleet.
Hailstones up to two centimetres in diameter were reported in Blackheath, in the Blue Mountains, and streets turned white in Sydney's east, inner west and north shore.
One larrikin in Newtown brought his snowboard out of storage, while young families in nearby Leichhardt tried their hand at making snow angels.
But others were not enjoying the unseasonal ice and sleet.
One Sydney motorist had to be rescued from floodwaters, and parts of the city's traffic network were plunged into chaos.
The NSW State Emergency Service recorded hundreds of calls for help as the storms swept in from the west on Saturday afternoon, with just three Sydney suburbs - Mount Druitt to the west, Marrickville in the inner west, and Randwick in the east - accounting for nearly 450 of the call-outs.
It comes after a long week for the SES, which has now fielded some 17,000 calls for help after deadly storms that lashed much of the state's east coast and left hundreds of people isolated by floodwaters in the state's Hunter region.
"Those calls are still coming in," an SES spokeswoman told AAP.
Share
