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Southern Australia's extreme weather has continued, lurching from an unseasonable heatwave, which caused a spate of bushfires in the area, to severe storms and flash flooding in the space of days.
The southeastern state of Victoria experienced major storms at the weekend, which caused extreme damage to the city infrastructure.
One case included the collapse of a supermarket roof in an eastern suburb of Melbourne, forcing around 100 people to be evacuated.
The supermarket's duty manager Mido Ramadan said the collapse came without warning.
"We could hear the rain on the roof from the storm and then it suddenly started coming in and a couple of parts of the ceiling collapsed," he told the Australian Associated Press on Monday.
In another Melbourne suburb, the storms contributed to a cyclist falling down a six-meter embankment and suffering spinal injuries.
The rain over previous days has assisted the efforts of firefighters in Central Victoria to contain the Lancefield fire, which has raged over the past 10 days.
The Lancefield fire was lit as a planned burn - a tactic firefighters use to reduce the chance of dried out grass fueling a forest fire - on Oct. 2 before it broke containment lines.
The bushfire, which is expected to under control by Monday night, claimed four properties and turned more than three thousand hectares of land to ash.
An independent investigation into why the fire went ahead, despite the warm weather, is expected to be tabled in three to four weeks.
All roads have been re-opened for residents of the area, but authorities are working against the clock to extinguish the fire before warmer weather returns later this week.
The drastic changes in weather can be attributed to the current Pacific Ocean El Nino and experts believe the extreme weather conditions will continue through until the end of the year.
