Monday, February 8, 2010

The Warragamba Dam catchment has received rain

Water flowing into Warragamba Dam, Sydney's main water supply dam, has raised the water level by more than one metre, or five percent.

Pollies are asking questions about paying for a desal plant.

The pictures shown on the late news on Nine were great, the Blue Mountains are awash.

South-East Queensland's not exactly dried out, either, although there's been a price paid.

The (RSPCA) estimates around 100 cattle and a large number of horses drowned in the Coomera River after the northern end of the Gold Coast received more than 360mm of rain in 24 hours over the weekend - the most intense day-long deluge in a century.

and

More rain on the way

Weather bureau senior forecaster Ben Annells said an unstable northeasterly air flow had brought heavy rain to the southeast coastal region.

"A lot of places in southeast Queensland have had the majority of their average monthly rainfall in 24 hours," he said. "Places like Southport and Logan have exceeded their monthly average already."

Mr Annells said other parts of the state could now look forward to rain.

And I've had a bit of rain here, too. An inch. But added to the four inches the other week it's been wet - and the grass is getting really, really long! People have been trying to mow between the showers over the weekend and today.

5 comments:

Skeeter said...

Kae, thanks for your midnight email on Saturday. Without that we might have missed the whole event.
By 4 am Sunday, the Coomera was roaring past our place higher than it had been in living memory.
By the time the light improved enough for photography, the level was dropping rapidly and islands were beginning to appear in the lake.

What is not being discussed is the BOM's failure to hint at this significant event, even in its 24-hour forecasts.

Another failure was the ABC's somewhat delayed attempts to report the event.
On the Sunday night ABC news — 15 hours after the river had topped — Karen announced that the Coomera was about to peak.
In the Monday morning ABC2 news, Karen was still predicting that the Coomera was nearing its peak. That had peak already occurred, 28 hours before her announcement was broadcast on national news.

Mehaul said...

Skeeter. The cynic in me relates these basic incongruencies of the ABC with the IPCC's self proclaimed ability to predict future climate change supposedly caused by man. The best memory I have of the recent email spill out of East Anglia was the story that they put the last 30 or so year's KNOWN climate data into the modelling that they use to predict the future and hit the button. The results weren't within a cooeee of reality. It predicted more droughts than had occurred. They appeared in the wrong regions at the wrong time etc etc.

All the best.

stackja1945 said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_water_crisis
1998 Sydney water crisis

Carpe Jugulum said...

Wow the rain arrived in Melbourne earlier, it absolutly belted down.

We've had flash flooding in the inner burbs, 3 out of 5 train lines are out of comission due to lighting strikes. I havn't seen rain like this in quite a few years.OMG!!!!!!, the weather is like it normally used to be (summer storms).

I'm waiting for some gazoo to blame this on AGW so i can begin banging my head on a desk.

Sharon Ferguson said...

Wanted to let you know Ive added you to my bloglist (Nunquam Terra)!