Inundated!

As anyone who has looked at a newspaper lately knows, it is raining in Australia right now...a lot.  It is currently 3:45pm on Sunday afternoon and so far today we have had 53mm of rain, 31mm in the last hour!  This really shows there is truth in the saying "when it rains, it pours" (or is it "it never rains but pours"?)...whatever the saying is, no kidding.
The weather forecasters are running out of new ways to describe the weather so the forecasts have statements like "rain with periods of rain, occasionally heavy".   It's hard to argue with that, since it seems to be what we are getting!

Brisbane is really lucky.  In 1974 there were massive floods here and there was only one dam upstream of the city.  When that broke the whole downtown area ended up under water.  Since 1974 they have built five dams upstream in relatively unpopulated areas.  They can manage the dams and the water without putting any towns in flood peril.  The picture above shows the flood levels from previous years.  The lowest sign, even with the light standard, is from 1974.  The river is across the road from this building (the Regatta Pub and Hotel, a fine historic Queenslander building) and is about 5m below street level.  From the bottom up the signs represent the flood levels in 1974, 1887, 1893 and 1841.  We had stuck this photo in the blog once before, but we now know how significant those levels are.  If it weren't for the dams we would probably have water lapping at our front door, and we are about 700m from the river, slightly uphill!
The flooding is mainly occuring 400 - 500km north of Brisbane, in and around the towns of Emerald and Rockhampton.  The topography there has almost no relief so the water isn't drianing away.  There are constant storm cells moving in and most of them move slowly over that area, sometimes dumping more than 100mm of rain in a day.
The really amazing thing is that while there are a few grumblers, most people are just trying to make do and wait it all out.  No-one is blaming the government or trying to point the finger at eco-terrorists.  Everyone accepts that this is nature and nature can be very mean.  Anyone who drives into a flood zone and requires rescuing will face a criminal charge, no whining allowed!  The miners and oil workers that are currently not working are being put to work by their parent companies to help with the clean-up and to get food and water in to people who are isolated by flood waters.  There is no end in sight to the rain and people are really trying to carry on as normally as possible.  We saw a news story about a man who, rather casually, said that he was staying in his house so that he could keep out the snakes...ack! 

Below is a link to a local newspaper's photo section for anyone is interested in seeing how bad this flood really is:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/photogallery/environment/weather/flood-disaster-surges-on/20110101-19cgs.html