Flooding Winter Rains

The world's climates seem to have taken a bizarre turn. Many parts of the US have heat-wave and drought conditions, but Britain and now parts of Australia are awash in water. I awoke this morning after two days of unrelenting rain to find a torrential downpour and we must have had close to 60mm over the period. Armidale has a summer maximum in rainfall and the winters are rather drier. So this is the first anomaly. By the way, it's difficult to catch torrential rain in a photo, so just believe me that the picture below was taken under monsoon conditions.

The second strange thing is that rain has been caused by a summer weather pattern with humid air being funneled in north-easterly from the warm coral sea. The result is that we've been having very warm temperatures for this time of year. Today's forecast is 16C and the minimum last night was 12C. Remember (a) we're 1000m (3100ft) above sea level and (b) it's supposed to be winter. Normally we average 13C in July during our usually sunny days and overnight temperatures fall to -2C. Rain, when it comes, is mostly created by storms coming from the southwest off the southern ocean.


So now our creeks are flooded and the town is cut into two except for a few higher level bridges. And the building site next to our house is also waterlogged as the picture shows. This area used to be the school playing field used by Emily and Rebecca during their play-periods 20-25 years ago! The school has since been relocated. Emily will have a surprise when she and Ella return in September.

AS