Winning Ways

Since the weather was foul yesterday, it was a pleasure to turn up the Armidale Bridge Club's Spring festival. I played in the Swiss Pairs on Saturday and the Swiss Teams today. The term Swiss seems to have nothing to do with the country that has a similar name, but I will not bore you with procedural details.

In the pairs, my regular partner ... Barbara Gates ... and I came 7th overall out of 56 pairs, a creditable performance. We we extremely tired after the event which took 8 hours including various stops for meals etc. The we turned up for the teams at 9am today (Sunday), with each team comprising two partnerships. Our team-mates were Nick Wall and Ed Hahn. Well, we had two wonderful sessions stretching over 9 hours during which we played 56 boards and the outcome was a very clear win for our team. Don't tell the tax-man that there were money prizes for the event, but we also won a very large silver bowl donated by Robin Stokes to commemorate his esteemed wife, Jean. The same team was second last year, so we went one better.

And, to lift the spirits, the rain has cleared away leaving brilliant blue skies and warm days.

AS

Official rainfall

The sun has returned to Armidale after three sodden days and the official tally for this rain event is no less than 170mm (or almost 7 inches). That's over 20% of the annual rainfall for much of Britain's south coast.

AS

Yet More Rain

It's 7.30 in the morning here and still raining. Armidale has now received getting on for 150mm in three days of almost constant rain, which is 6 inches for those tied to imperial measures. The forecast is for the rain to clear later today.

Dot and I leaped (?) into the car an hour ago to drive down to the local creek to inspect the volume of water heading downstream. It was off its peak  - there was a high tide mark a little way above current water level, but still impressive. These are some of the pictures we took. Th first two show two of the town's many low-level causeways which are now closed to traffic. The re-routed traffic has caused jams over some of the main bridges. The second shows a tree trunk lying on the road-way and I guess that will have to be cut up and hauled away before traffic resumes.

The second pair of photos shows flooded playing fields, many of which are appropriately located on the flood-plain. These two are both soccer fields and I played on the top one many years ago. However, there are pitches for the other football codes, baseball, and cricket - all sodden or actually inundated.

The first of the last two pictures shows a point where the Dumaresq Creek is forced into a narrow channel and is flowing fast. In the background is the car park of the Ex-Services Club to which Dot and I belong, but the premises were safe this time. The other view is rotated 180 degrees and looks east downstream through Armidale's central parkland. My pictures shown two posts ago were taken from the bridge in the background. Oh dear! It's now raining hard again and Bureau of Met's website shows torrential falls just west of here.

AS

Even More Rain

In the last two and a half days we have had 125mm of rain and it is now pouring hard so we could easily get up to 150 or even 175mm! That's a fantastic amount and the weather system that has bought is stationary atop Armidale and has been for three days. Usually our weather systems move rapidly from east to west but the present one is immobile and, more importantly feeding moist air from the Arafura Sea - look that up on Google. All the river systems in northern NSW are now in flood, but, as I've said before, Armidale is near the great divide at an altitude of about 1000m and the water runs away fast from the headwaters of the streams. It's dark now, so we cannot run out and have a look at the creek in flood. I'll do that in the morning for I suspect that we're witnessing the highest stream flow in the 40 years I have been here.

AS

More rain

Over the last 24 hours we've had no less than 80mm of rain (75mm = 3 inches) and it's still raining. In fact, the forecast for the next 4 days is rain. I imagine that we'll get another 40mm over that period making 4.5 inches overall. That's a lot and there are flood warnings for all the local rivers.

That thought led me to interrupt this post and rush down to Dumaresq Creek, which flows through the city, to take some pictures of the flood and these are shown below. The water level was at about 1.2m above the causeway or perhaps 1.8m above normal water level. This is the highest level I've ever seen the creek and it was flowing very fast despite it being only 10km from the source at Mount Duval. Fortunately, this flood will cause little damage because our city planners have banned all development on the flood plain.

The first picture looks east from the Faulkner Street foot-bridge and one of Max's favourite play areas, just visible on the right, is under water. The second looks west and shows most of the surrounding parkland also under water.

AS

Fourth Re-Birthday

Hi folks,

I'll just remind you that today is the fourth anniversary of my cardiac arrest and subsequent resurrection. I'm well, thanks, and looking forward to the next third of a century or so! Thanks to those of you who sent in congratulations or condolences.

Life is too short to keep standing still, so I'm keeping on working at a fast pace - refereeing an article for a US journal this morning, having an article of mine accepted yesterday, working on two consultancies, and presenting 4 conference papers in the next three weeks.

See you soon ... well, in the course of the next 12 months.

AS

More Flowers

Spring is nearing completion here as we approach what is mid-May in the northern hemisphere. However, our temperatures are rather flash compared with what passes for an English Spring and, after a cold start last month, ours have hovered around 25C for the last few days ... albeit with some high humidity and a series of thunderstorms.

Given the warmth and great soil moisture, our garden has put on an excellent display this year. I've already posted some pictures of the garden in full bloom, but have a look at these images. The first three are of our bottle-brushes, so-called because their shape resembles the kitchen brushes used to clean .. er.. bottles. They come in various colours and ours are pink and red, and the honey-eater birds like them as much as we do!

The final picture shows a lovely bush on our western wall, though I do not know its name. It attracts a lot of bees collecting pollen. And just to the right you can see one corner of our massive honeysuckle bust with its fragrant yellowish flowers that last all summer. I love this time of year when all is fresh and green, especially after lots of rain. The only problem is mowing all the grass.

AS