Keep 'er up Hughie

The usual comment in Australia is a request to "Send 'er down Hughie".  I, and everyone else I speak to, is of the opinion that we have had enough rain for a while and some fine weather would be good.

The current rain event started some time on Sunday (28 November) and since then we have had:
Sunday         26.0mm
Monday       28.0mm
Tuesday       19.5mm
Wednesday  17.5mm
Thursday      14.0mm

All the rain on Thursday fell in the late afternoon/evening.  Here are a couple of radar images from 1645 and 1918.  I have marked the approximate location of our house with an X and used arrows to show the direction the weather is heading.

We were woken at 2:30 this morning (Friday 3 December) by a very strong thunderstorm which went for at least 30 minutes.  I went back to sleep until awoken again at 5am  by heavy rain.  Here is the radar at that tiime.
When it got light (still raining gently at 0545) I found we had had another 21mm (for a total of 126mm = 5 inches since Sunday).  Going down to the Creek I found this to be the situation.
Usually this only lasts for an hour or so after the rain stops.  Our lawn is basically flowing water as everything runs off the hillsides.  We won't be able to get on the vegetable garden for at least 2 days.

The most worrying bit is that the weather forecast is for showers, scattered or isolated, for the next 8 days.  This has to my mind certainly justified my cancellation of the birding trip for Saturday.

I have added  a few images I took later in the morning (after the flood subsided) on a trip to Queanbeyan to this post.Later in the evening our daughter emailed to say there had been a lot of water over the Captains Flat Rd to the South of our house.  She had decided not to challenge it.  The next morning I pedalled down to have a squizz.  Looking at the grass in the closer hawthorn bush in this image the water was at least 1.4m deep.
The next image gives an indication of the width of the flood (according to my bike odometer it would have been at least 400m).
.. and it has well and truly buggered the road surface (which the Council had redone about 4 months ago).
Finally, here is a shot of the creek in the centre of proceedings (at least 14 hours after the storm finished).  It is usually a couple of placid pools.

To put all of this in a wider context we have received 139mm in the last 7 days.  During that time I noticed a "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" for Darwin on the BoM site.  Knowing how it can rain in the tropics I wondered what this meant.  Amongst the material on that screen was the fact that an area near Darwin had received 104mm in an hour.  The Wet (in Africa 'Long Rains') in the Territory has not really started yet!

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Hi Martin
It has eased here, now. More rain forecast over coming week.
Just grey clouds.
Going Orchid spotting at Jervis Bay to use the time made available by lack of working weather (remember those dry days when you could work outside?).
Cheers
Denis
4 December 2010 at 09:22:00 GMT+11
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