The above photos show the Regatta Hotel, one of the oldest buildings in Brisbane. It is on one of the main roads, about 30m from the Brisbane River. In the top photo there are some small rectangles on the side of building. These rectangles mark the high water level during the years of the big floods: 1974, 1887, 1983 and 1841, from the bottom to the top. In other words, they get some crazy high waters here! (For some prospective, this is a three story building). Although I am sure there are now some modern protective measures in place to minimize the high waters.
Today we experienced our first heavy rain, and even the locals thought that it was bad. The weather prediction was for "intermittent showers, up to 3mm". Instead, we had what we think of as a monsoon! The day started out cloudy and very hot, then at around 10am the sky turned completely black and the rain started. This is not like a bad prairie storm, this is an absolute downpour! It rained sideways and everything on the horizon just disappeared behind the clouds. We couldn't see across the street from our office. The clouds moved fast and it rained off and on all afternoon, with a total accumulation of 28mm, almost 10 times what was predicted. Now we know why it floods!
(Sorry for the bad photo quality, our temporary internet connection here is really pokey with uploads and we can't yet load everything into Flikr...soon, my pretties).
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