Yet another flood!

 In the last two weeks or so, Armidale has according to our rain-gauge received >150 mm  of rain (c. 6 inches for those in the UK and USA). So we've had our maybe the 5th flood event of 2021. Put another way, if my family in the south of the UK received that kind of rainfall across an entire year they'd be drowning in about 156 inches of rain. We've had major flood events all over eastern Australia, with many towns and villages awash in water, and major highways cut. There's no way we could drive to Canberra via the inland right now, yet about two years ago we were in a terrible drought.

What caused the change? Well the answer lies in two partially connected events. Currents in the Indian ocean have delivered very warm water to the NW of our continent, creating moist air that heads right in our direction through favourable wind patterns. Secondly, Australia's east coast is influenced by a periodic El Nina event that draws warm water from the west coast of South America in our direction. This also contributes high moisture air. Putting the two events together we've heaps of rain, although Armidale has been at the bottom end of rainfall totals because we're in a kind of rain shadow. For many parts of inland NSW the November rainfall totals were the highest in 100 years!!

Wanting some pictures? We here are three of Wednesday's flood event ... the highest I think of 2021. Out for my morning walk I came across these views ... and by the way I was not the only one taking pictures at around 7 am! Faulkner Street - our main avenue into the town centre was about 0.7 m under water a blocked to all traffic. However, I crossed over the flood via the pedestrian bridge on the left.

And here I am on the bridge looking east on the first and weston the second. Dumaresq Creek is usually about 2 m wide, but far more on this occasion. And you can see from the ripples how fast the water was running.

AS