Monday, March 14, 2022

A ‘Rain Bomb’ / Part 2

After flooding the capital of Queensland, Brisbane, the ‘rain bomb ‘ system moved slowly south towards Sydney, while dumping another huge amount of rain on the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales. Some places had their annual rainfall in 24 hours. One weather station recorded nearly 800mm (31inches).
Murwillimbah on the Tweed River was inundated.
The town of Lismore is situated on Wilsons River, a tributary of the Richmond, one of the three Northern Rivers.
It has had flooding before.
But this time it has been devastated. 
See YouTube video below.

Water rose in the town 2m (6ft ) above the previous record level to 14.5m (47.5ft).
People were trapped in the houses the water rose so quickly and some had to get into their roof space and cut through the roof to await rescue.
The flood waters moved south into the Richmond inundating towns like Woodburn and even Ballina at its mouth.




We were under a severe weather warning here but the system seemed to falter just north of Sydney and then turn inland. We got plenty of rain however, nearly 200mm (8 inches) over 3 days and our creek came up with the lower paddock flooding. But that was short lived as the coastal lake our creek runs into was opened up by the huge surf (5m/16ft waves) and the water quickly drained away. If I can hear the surf at our place, I know it’s big!
But we got continual heavy showers for days after. Our total for this weather event was around 500mm (20 inches)
Everything is very very soggy. 
But thankfully we were spared the disaster those up north endured.











Western Sydney had bad floods as a result of the system with half a million people on evacuation orders. That area is on the flood plain of two major rivers and, despite them being dammed, torrential rain always causes problems. The dams were full this year and they had to release water for safety reasons, causing problems downstream.

We here have now had our annual rainfall in less than 6 months.
This has been the wettest and coolest summer I can remember.

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