Spotted at Woonona, Warilla: Wollongong's on waterspout watch

Mr Avery captured video of two waterspouts off Woonona Beach on Saturday morning. And not far away from one of the two powerful spouts was a ship which was close to feeling the full force of Mother Nature.

As one commentator said about Mr Avery's video: "Imagine being on that ship, awesome footage."

READ MORE: Tree smashes onto Austinmer house, woman hospitalised

On Friday afternoon Kai Trott spotted a spinning column while fishing at Windang dog beach while others took to the Illawarra Mercury Facebook page on Saturday to share their own photos.

Waterspouts appear sporadically when there is "a very fine balance between everything," a meteorologist told the Mercury.

"It's not associated like the tornadic conditions of a thunderstorm, it's a similar sort of whirl in the atmosphere but it needs to be fairly calm so that there's a gentle shift in the wind direction as it moves up," the Bureau of Meteorology's Helen Reid said.

There was nothing calm or gentle about the weather later in the day as rain dumped itself across the Illawarra.

READ MORE: Flood warning across Wollongong as rainstorm hits northern suburbs

A tree smashed onto an Austinmer house about midday Saturday, hospitalising a woman and prompting an emergency response prompting a multi-agency emergency response.

Wollongong SES Deputy Unit Commander Menno Schaaf said there had been a few landslips reported in the northern suburbs, mainly on roads, and warned that the region was a risk of landslips given the ongoing rain.

"Everything is saturated, everything is wet," he said.

He said the SES had received about 50 requests for assistance on Saturday morning, mostly in the northern suburbs of Thirroul, Austinmer and up to Helensburgh and Stanwell Park.

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