You made our local news this morning. Rivers are nice and all, but I hope yours stays away from you and your house .
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Well I just watched a video of a house floating down a river, and I donāt know what to say about that.
Itās not very long since half of Australia seemed to be on fire, and now thereās massive flooding, and meanwhile thereās this pandemicā¦
My heart goes out to those who are getting completely hammered by all this.
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January 2020 in fact. I believe that was during an El NiƱo year, and this time itās a La NiƱa year.
If itās the same one I saw that was in the Manning valley, south of here. My area has been fortunate that there was a comparatively dry spot on the New England Tableland that covered a part of our riverās upper catchment. The Manning valley (and several of the short rivers with coastal valleys) got a thorough soaking and have had record flood levels.
The house in question was washed away on Saturday, and apparently the couple who lived in it were scheduled to be married that day. A Gofundme campaign has raised at least A$100,000 for them. But nothing, as far as I know, for their landlord.
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Pretty much the whole summer of 2019ā20. I had friends burned out on the 8th of November and an evacuation warning on the 10th. We didnāt see blue sky until the 26th of December, and the fires werenāt entirely out until March 2020.
2019 was dry:
Indeed, it was the worst drought on record:
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Blue sky!
Thereās a bit more water coming down the river from rain on the tablelands yesterday. Itāll produce a third peak this afternoon, but nothing to worry about.
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How do you feel about spiders?
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/thousands-spiders-try-escape-flooded-173033847.html
(Kinchela Creek is near here, one of the branches of the river that flows through my town, on the floodplain east of here.)
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Only in Australiaā¦
I will never get to travel there. My partner has bad arachnophobia.
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My first reaction to the headline is āoh, theyāre farming spiders now?ā.
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Nope, Dairy farms. The cows need spiders as a source of vitamin B12.
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And yet, strangely, more Australians are killed by bears than by our venomous wildlife.
We have no bears.
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From the ones Iāve known, Iām sure more Australians are killed by beers than bears.
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Yes, but we certainly have a great many beers.
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Beers are better than bears and both are better than spiders.
Personally, I think that of all the multi-legged horrors spiders arenāt the worst. They at least eat some of the other crawly things.
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We always worry here about some of the processional caterpillars around this time of year. Not from the harm that they cause to us humans directly, but they are very poisonous to dogs and cats.
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Also, they are terribly destructive to white cedar trees.
I prescribe sheep-dip.
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Mosquitos are the worst. Though Iām not very good-humoured about paper wasps either.
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Thatās exactly what I was thinking of.
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Finnish mosquitoes are optimised for getting through reindeer-hide.
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German mosquitos are optimized for keeping me awake at nightā¦
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