Australia Weather News

Businesses and schools in Albany are closed due to flooding  after the Western Australian city recorded its wettest day on record.

The Bureau of Meteorology reported 126.4mm was recorded in the 24 hours to to 9am Friday, a new daily rainfall record for the city, which has records dating back to 1887.

Bureau of Meterology forecaster Christie Johnson said there was significant falls in a short period of time in some areas.

'We had a lot of places recording the area of 30 millimetres in half an hour to an hour," she said.

The State Emergency Service received 150 calls for help across the region on Thursday night.

Department of Fire and Emergency Services Superintendent Wayne Green said the calls started from about 9pm in Albany as water levels rose and roads began being cut off.

"Most of the jobs were flooding work with the small amount of actual structural damage that was caused by flooding," he said.

"With all that water across our roads there's still a lot of debris and litter that's been littered across some of these roads."

A Rex airlines flight headed for Albany was re-routed back to Perth on Thursday night and delays were expected on Friday morning.

Several vehicles were stuck in floodwater.

Farmers rejoice

South Stirling grain farmer Mark Adams said the rain at his farm was torrential but could not have been timed more perfectly ahead of seeding.

"I don't think I've seen rain quite that heavy before," he said. 

"We're going to get a nice germination in another week or two."

Mr Adams said his farm was in a very different position last year.

"Last year we were wishing for rain come the end of April," he said.

"And this year, we've sort of got nearly half as much [rain] in four hours as what we had in all of last year's cropping programme."

Schools forced to close

Several schools across Albany were closed and some childcare centres were forced to turn away children and focus their efforts on the clean-up.

Village childcare centre owner Preity Dhaliwal said the new business that opened its doors seven months ago would usually care for about 62-68 children on any given day, with 161 children enrolled.

"But that's just this service, we have another service which is closed as well," she said.

"Some families in the morning they would have found out that there's nothing, no childcare."

Ms Dhaliwal said she drove past the centre during the storm but did not realise the building was flooded until she received a call from one of her staff.

A team member was at the gym and she said the gym roof collapsed.

Ms Dhaliwal said she received calls from other staff whose houses were flooded and went without power throughout the storm.

More rain to come

Ms Johnson said more storms were expected.

"It will be more a rain risk in terms of the severe storms today," she said.

"We could well see those locally heavy falls that could cause flash flooding right across the South West and South Coast."

Mt Barker recorded 106.4mm, Tenterden recorded 97.8mm and Narrikup 75.6mm.

A storm had lashed Perth on Thursday afternoon, with about 400 homes still without power on Friday morning.