Sydney weather: Woman, 31, is killed in car crash as storm strikes the city – with more rain on the way on Tuesday

A woman has died in a car crash during wild weather in which four people were struck by lightning, causing major delays at Sydney Airport and causing traffic chaos.

The 31-year-old woman died after her SUV collided with another in Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches.

The other driver, a 51-year-old man, was uninjured.

The crash occurred after heavy rain hit the city, with a violent storm tearing a hole in the airport’s main runway.

The damage caused flights to be canceled and caused a series of delays.

Meanwhile, four people sheltering from the rain under trees at the Royal Botanic Garden were struck by lightning.

Two men and two women were rushed to hospital after being injured by lightning strikes while sitting under a tree in the Botanical Gardens at around 12.45pm.

A man in his late teens and a woman in her 20s were taken to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

A man and a woman in their 30s were taken to St Vincent’s Hospital.

The city was hit by approximately 75,000 lightning strikes in three hours.

The wild weather also caused widespread chaos on the train network, damaging equipment at Milsons Point.

The T1 North Shore Line was shut down as a result and no trains ran between North Sydney and Gordon.

This will result in significant delays to the T9 Northern in the evening, which will also impact the T2 Inner West and T3 Bankstown Lines due to train flow.

The delays caused heavily congested platforms at Wynyard, Town Hall and Central on Monday evening.

A severe thunderstorm warning was issued in the Greater Sydney region as many suburban areas experienced possible flash flooding.

More rain will fall on Tuesday, with another storm possible in the afternoon.

Temperatures will rise to 26 degrees Celsius as clouds linger over the city.

Earlier, the storm delayed Taylor Swift’s private plane by as much as 30 minutes as the pop star flew from Melbourne to Sydney.

Swift and her team left Melbourne around noon on Monday, ahead of her next four-day run of shows in her Eras Tour in the Harbor City. The megastar landed safely at 1:25 p.m.

After landing, she is expected to be taken to a penthouse at Crown in Barangaroo.

The pop superstar, 34, will perform four shows in Sydney from Friday before heading to Singapore.

The Shake It Off hitmaker wore a dark miniskirt paired with a red T-shirt that showed off a glimpse of midriff during her flight.

She paid tribute to her boyfriend Travis Kelce by wearing a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl LVIII Champs baseball cap after his team’s big win earlier this month.

Swift was accompanied by her entourage as she climbed the steps of her Bombardier Global 6000 plane, which features a double bed and a sophisticated dining cabin.

More than 13,000 homes on the city’s northern beaches were knocked out just before 1pm on Monday with heavy rain, high winds and lightning.

Residents of Fairlight, Manly, Balgowlah, Balgowlah Heights, Seaforth, Manly Vale, Killarney Heights and Mosman were plunged into darkness and were all affected.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for heavy rain, damaging winds and large hailstones for much of NSW.

The heaviest rainfall was recorded at Kings Langley, in Sydney’s northwest, where 48mm of rain fell in an hour.