Like many people across the Illawarra, I was woken on Saturday morning by a clap of thunder and a roaring sound.
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It was just after 5am, pitch black except for the lightning, and - even though I knew it had been raining all night - it took a minute to work out what was making such a massive noise outside.
It was mostly the sheets of rain, but it was also coming from the back of my house, where there's normally a trickling creek.
Do you have a story to share from the weekend? Email newstips@illawarramercury.com.au
We walk across it with our five-year-old on her way to school, stepping on stones in the shallow flow and up the banks.
But on Saturday morning, it was a raging torrent of dark water, the trickle turned to a waterfall pushing downstream.
Luckily for us, aside from a wet garage and some rainwater which had found its way under the house, we are situated too far above the creek for it to affect our property.
I was rostered to work, so knowing we were okay, I got up and padded into my study in the dark to begin updating the Mercury's live blog about the weather.
In the northern suburbs at the same time, my colleague Anna Warr planned to go to pilates before her shift began. But when she saw the rain, she grabbed her camera and started to capture an unfolding disaster.
Social media was blowing up, with people sending us videos of cars floating away on the M1, or posting shots of their streets completely submerged in water.
Weather monitors along the coast and escarpment were showing that more than 200mm of rain had fallen in 24 hours, and the Bellambi Point weather station indicated most of that had come down between five and six am.
It felt hard to get a handle on all that was happening, and so quickly. I can't imagine how emergency services felt coping with the hundreds of distress calls.
Travelling past a flooded Princes Highway in Bulli, Anna headed for homes along Hewitts Creek in Thirroul, where she found Gary and Bronwyn Hart facing devastation after a terror-filled morning.
Then Wollongong City SES posted a picture of a cabin in Mount Keira which had become dislodged and floated down Byarong Creek and slammed into a bridge with two people inside. Miraculously, they escaped without serious injury.
Another colleague messaged to say water had come up over the car park and into the Cabbage Tree Hotel and over Anama Street, where the council bought-back and bulldozed homes in the flood zone, for the first time since 1998.
And, with that first mention of those notorious August floods - it became clear how bad this disaster was.
We've had lots of rain and flooding in recent years, but the 1998 floods loom large in the memories of most long-term Illawarra residents.
I can remember weeks of rain, sodden paddocks and roads, my high school being closed and hearing stories of how some classmates lost everything.
But the accounts - of how the rain came down, and then terrifyingly up, with such force that it caused landslips and damaged thousands of homes - are folklore in this town.
Just like on Saturday, it was creeks, blocked drains and culverts that caused the biggest problems.
Sheets of water falling over the escarpment rushed downhill, pushing trees, logs, branches and other debris and overwhelming stormwater infrastructure.
Mount Keira resident Paul Harrison, who lives next door to the property where the Airbnb cabin was swept away on Saturday, explained:
"The culverts are at an angle to the actual creek, so it traps any sort of debris that may come through... and it causes a dam. Once that blocks, it backs up, the water rises and it goes through the least resistant area, which is over land not following the creek - because it's full already."
Whether it was in Mount Keira, Figtree, Bulli, Thirroul, Mount Ousley, Fairy Meadow or elsewhere, multiple waterways got blocked in that terrible hour on Saturday morning, forcing the water to find another way.
It had such force that it picked up two-tonne bins, knocked down fences, erupted through roads and rose so quickly that homes normally several metres above the water line were inundated neck deep.
As we worked through the day on Saturday, the stories of devastation kept coming.
It was shocking to drive around and see the mud and sediment showing how far the water rose.
It was all anyone could talk about, and everyone knew someone personally affected by the disaster. So many people had come out to help others who were worse off.
I could have kept writing well into the evening, and only stopped when a friend asked if I could have her daughter for the night to keep her away from the trauma of having a flooded home.
I clocked off and ducked down the road to grab a loaf of bread, but on my way to the corner store was stopped in my tracks as mud and debris covered the road a stones throw from my street.
The contents of people's homes were in their front lawns, their cars flung wide open airing out and the concrete retaining walls around the creek were smashed and displaced by that same water I'd heard roaring past my own backyard hours before.
With survivors guilt I drove past, knowing I had to help my friends in their hour of need, feeling shocked again, for the umpteenth time that day, that a so-called once-in-100-year flood had ravaged the region 26 years since the last time it happened.