Some parts of the world are experiencing severe drought. Others are buried under meters of snow. And yet others are ravaged by flood. Just to remind you, the area of Queensland under water is now estimated to be greater than the area of France and Germany put together. The rain keeps coming and is now moving south of the border in our direction. After days of dull weather and misty rain, it is now beginning to rain harder and more steadily. Moreover, our local forecast sees the rain continuing for much of the week as a surface trough over the North Coast moves southwest - in our direction - and merges with another trough coming from the west. The winds are from the northeast bring moist and humid air in off the coral sea.
Our weather problems are mild compared with SE Queensland. The Mary River (affecting Maryborough and Gympie) has a 20m flood - that's > 60 feet in UK language if British Readers readers can believe it. That's the outcome of 350mm of rain overnight (or c. 14 inches). Many other coastal locations are drowning, including Brisbane and, of course, Rockhampton whose plight flashed around the world. Unusually, this rain has swept far inland and we've just watched pictures of vehicles being swept downstreet in Toowoomba to the north of us, a city 4 times the size of Armidale. To their west, Dalby has just been severely flooded by the Condamine system for the second time and even further downstream is St George, which has had close its largest flood ever - the second in two years. St George is one of the cotton producing communities whose small businesses we've been studying and is now a bit of a mess! We were last there three months ago.
In most countries floods are fast moving events. Australia's floods, especially to the west of us in the Murray-Darling basin, tend to be massive and slow moving affairs. There's an old story told of a paddle steamer moored on the Murrumbidgee River at Hay in the south of NSW. A big flood tore the vessel from its moorings and, after the flood subsided, locals scoured the countryside for it. Eventually they found the boat 17km (10.5 miles) from the river bank!! Water now flowing down the Condamine will take at least 4 months to reach the sea and, in the process, spread out over vast areas of inland NSW. Even the coastal rivers like the Fitzroy flowing through Rockhampton have flood peaks that may take a week or so to start subsiding in any meaningful way.
We're still in early summer and the prognosis is for a sodden continuation of the start. Armidale has hardly had any warm weather and today the temperature hovered around 20C, little warmer than a good day in mid-winter. We'll soon find that our tans are actually rust!
AS
2 comments:
Is there a real possibility that your own home might flood if there is sustained rain in Armidale? Richard.
No, Richard, there's no chance of us being flooded as we're up on a hill-side and nowhere near a creek or river. Also, we're only about 10km from the Great Divide, so local catchments upstream are small and, in the middle of town down by Dumaresq Creek, water may come up fast, but it also goes down fast.
AS
Post a Comment