Thursday, 30 March 2017

A Dry Continent?

Australia has the reputation of being a dry continent and, indeed, we have sifting sand dunes in the Simpson Desert that resemble a Saharan landscape. On the other hand we can record some impressive rain events, one of which has just occurred. Tropical cyclone Debbie hit the central Queensland coast 2-3 days ago, accompanied by violent winds of over 250 km per hour. I doubt if many of my readers have ever experienced any storm over 100 km per hour, a figure 2.5 times that level caused massive damage to buildings, trees, crops, power-lines, high-priced yachts and other infrastructure.

But the rainfall received by the town of Mackay was staggering. In the last four days it has received 478 mm of rain (or 19 inches). That's almost two-thirds of the annual rainfall we receive here in Armidale or, if I remember correctly, the annual rainfall of the south coast of England. And, worse still, the system is heading southwards in our direction. As yet Armidale has no strong winds - indeed right now it's dead calm, but the winds are picking up on the coast close to the Queensland border. But it started raining about 2 hours ago and there are forecasts for up to 100 mm (4 inches) on the Northern Tablelands where we live.

My cousin Carol and her daughter, Vivienne, who live near Blackpool in Lancashire (UK) are currently visiting Australia - we're meeting up on Saturday in Sydney - and, guess what. They're staying now on the Gold Coast where maybe 200 mm (8 inches) is about to fall! It's not exactly great holiday weather. The figure at dawn today had already reached 85 mm and in the mountains behind it was more like 150mm already. I hope they've got webbed feet!

AS

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