The House(s) of Fran_mart

Not as bad where we are (currently Canberra) as many places but still wet.  A number of places on the coast North of Sydney have had over 800mm in the last week.  Here is a map of rainfall for the week ending 16 March. it suggests that the soil was already well hydrated before this lot started. Here is a map of rainfall for the last 7 days. The dark blue patch in far NW NSW includes Tibooburra which copped 103mm on the 22nd.  BoM has annual rainfall data for Tibooburra airport for the past 21 years: for 10 of those years the ANNUAL rainfall has been <150mm, with a low of 49mm in 2002. On our way up to Canberra we noticed that there was a lot of water in the Bombala River: that reflected rain about 50 km upstream on Brown Mountain. Yesterday when I drove past Scrivener Dam water was being released in anticipation of what was to come. Today (after 30mm yesterday and 13 mm so far today) they had dropped a sluice gate to allow more out. By about 1800hrs they had opened a ...

No, not really back at Carwoola but back in Canberra. We needed to come back to register the Pajero and came up on the Saturday to see balloons lift off on Sunday morning.  This also meant we'd be around for the Skyfire display which finishes off the Enlighten Festival. The first evidence of the Festival was the caring ACT Government having closed off Parkes Way, so that it took 15 minutes, rather than 1, to get from Kings Avenue to Bunda St.  Why they don't just close the road completely is a mystery.  (Actually it isn't a mystery: its the only East West route in North Canberra.  The real mystery is why they allow so many events that require it to be closed.) Just before 7 PM and right on schedule, a Globemaster did a fly past.  I thought this a nice shot of it coming past Bugs. Then it did a level flight over the Lake. As darkness approached - 1930 - we headed off down to the Lake.  We took Tammy as she's pretty deaf and doesn't seem to worry ...