This time last year I was moaning about drought and bushfires. Now I am under a flood warning. 259 mm of rain fell into my gauge in 24 hours to 9 AM, and 42 mm in the four hours since.
If you suddenly stop hearing from me, it will be because I have been swept out into the middle of the Tasman Sea, and am out of range of the 4G service.
Now 108 mm since 9 AM. There are floodwaters in the town. My internet connection is getting rather laggy.
Best of luck to you, Agemegos.
The one time Iâve been in really heavy rain was on Heron Island. I had thought I had been in heavy rain before that. An umbrella would have been smashed apart in moments.
Thatâs really unnerving. Best of luck on getting through it! And I hope this is a one-time fluctuation and not an omen for the year . . .
Okay. There has been an evacuation order for low-lying areas of the town (my house is not in a low-lying area). We might be a bit disaster-area-ish tomorrow. The predicted peak river level is 6.5 metres at 7 AM (20:00 UTC), but we refer to the people who make these predictions as ânovellistsâ, and with most of the weather stations and river height gauges out of order since last yearâs fires they are stretching themselves into genre fiction. The levee around the town is at 6.7 metres.
Science fiction, I hope, rather than horror.
Best of luck!
Fingers crossed!
I hope youâre ok, and that the low-lying folks in town will get to go home to relatively-dry houses.
How are things looking this morning?
Edit: Ugh. This all sounds miserable. Best of luck to everyone affected.
I hope youâre staying clearer of the water than this!
Iâm still here!
The flood level peaked in the small hours this morning, and after a bit of confusion both on-line sources available to me agree that it was at a level of 6.5 metres, where the protective levee around the business district of town is at 6.7 metres.
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDN60232/IDN60232.059127.plt.shtml
I would have put it a bit lower based on my eyeball measurements. There was half a metre of water over what was once our tennis court, and I thought that was at 5.35 m, so I would have said no more than 5.85.
Serious flooding is occurring south of here, in the Hastings and Manning valleys, with moderate flooding south of that and north of here in the Hunter, Nambucca, and Orara valleys.
A scout who just returned from buying a newspaper tells me that the shops in town are closed and sandbagged. One supermarket is outside the levee; âcleverlyâ built on piers to keep it main floor above flood level, it is nevertheless inaccessible. The other large supermarket is sold out of key commodities. My sister remarked that in this is the third time in eighteen months that weâve had panic buying and interrupted supplies: because of bushfires, because of coronavirus, and now because of a flood. What we need next is a plague of mice.
Just for the moment there is a bit of blue sky visible and sun streaming into my study window, and my house has new river views.
Australia just isnât catching a breakâŚ
I hope the river goes back to where it belongs soon.
We had snow flurries today while my garden is already going into âhey itâs spring timeâ mode.
My sister-in-lawâs brother has his first crop in four years, and canât harvest because of rain.
It really ought to be weird marsupial mouse-oids. (Closest seems to be the rat-kangaroo.)
There are marsupial mice, you know: dunnarts, antechinuses, dasyures, planigales and so on. Most of them are are carnivorous, of course.
But apart from occasional outbreaks of kangaroos and emus, our plague species are mostly introduced from Britain.
O_O
Please be safe!
From the other side of the river:
It appears that they used to have a swimming pool, which explains a couple of things, such as the large pink life-saver and the collapse of the bank.
We had heavy rain again yesterday, bringing the total in my gauge to 911 mm in 120 hours. Thatâs more than we had in the entirety of 2018 and 2019 combined. Predictions are for the river to top the levee about now. The town centre has been evacuated and Council workers are turning back anyone who wants to cross the bridge without a darned good reason. My lowest floor is still eleven metres above the water.
So the town is going to fill up with water, but it will be slow-moving and not do terrible damage. People are getting it worse south of here, down as far as western Sydney.
