Under Water

We have just had several days of rain, and the next four will also be wet. We probably had about 60mm all up, or about 2.5 inches in imperial measures. After several months of above average rain, virtually nothing sank into the saturated ground and it ran off into Dumaresq Creek, which runs through the middle of town. This is a perpetual creek and always has water in it, but constrained to a narrow channel maybe 2 m wide.

Well, the latest rain generated an immediate flood and the accompanying pictures were taken about 4 hours after the last lot of torrential rain stopped and just as the grey cloud was lifting. Several streets cross the creek at right angles via causeway and the photos are of the Faulkner St crossing, which was closed to traffic. As you can see, the creek is now about 5 to 10 times its normal width. The first photo looks south down Faulkner St towards the CBD; the second looks east towards the coast - 100+km away; and the last, west towards the Great Divide, just 10km away. Such events usually occur once every two years or so, but the long dry period of the noughties reduced this somewhat.

AS