Deluge in Diamond Creek

We've been having strange weather in Victoria the past few weeks: first we broke the record for the hottest November with temperatures close to 40 degrees in Diamond Creek, followed by 45mm of rain within about 30 hours last weekend, which was also quite unusual.

But nothing compared to what happened yesterday: around 2:20pm the sky got dark and it started blowing badly. Annabelle and I were home and went upstairs to see the weather approach. Hailstones came down with such force that I moved away from the window because I was afraid it would break. Then it started pouring... we got 35mm of rain in 10 minutes!
We went downstairs to check on the frontdoor which previously had had some water come in, but that was fine. Then we checked the garage - we knew drainage isn't good there, but when we pave the driveway we'll also put proper drainage in.

I'd already put a threshold at the garage door to stop any water that might enter the garage from getting into the house. I'd also bought a chisel to remove some bricks from the rear to give any water entering the garage a way out, but hadn't done that yet.
How I wish I had: when I opened the door from the house to the garage, immediately muddy water started pouring into the house...

I panicked, got Annabelle away and started removing anything on the floor: rugs with toys etc. However I forgot to close the garage door again, until quite some time later. With the new threshold it actually does a great job of blocking the flow... but now most of the house got flooded - all the way to the kitchen.

The garage got up to 12cm of water and mud in it, and in the hallway there was about 8cm. Luckily just the floorboards got wet: it only went about one meter into the three carpeted bedrooms downstairs.

Apart from some soil and rocks being washed away, and the main garage door being blocked by 30cm of debris, there were no major problems outside. We even got a waterfall for a while at our front door steps!

Cleaning up was a big task: buckets of water were removed, after which I used a squeegee to get the mud off. Then it required about 4 mobbing sessions to get the floor passable again. There is no major damage: the carpet seems to be drying OK, and the floorboards are not too bad. They do however bend up a bit at the seams, so they may have to be sanded back and relacquered.

After cleaning the garage today I finally took out a brick from the garagewall... more wild weather was forecast, but it luckily didn't eventuate.