Blog : Rain, rain, rain. When will it end?

80 posts
10/8/2022 11:18 pm

Rain, rain, rain. When will it end?

It seems the wet weather that has inundated the eastern seaboard and states has not finished with us yet. As we move toward summer, the weather forecasters are telling us this will continue for a while. This will be our 3rd wet summer in a row, connected by wet winters. It has predominantly been a wet season since the end of the bush fires of 2019, fires that were responsible for destroying a very large proportion of the nation's natural environment and placing many animals on the endangered list. It also stripped much of the landscape bare and susceptible to erosion from the consistent rains since.

Weather scientists blame the rains on a weather condition known as la niña, where convection over the Pacific Ocean causes the air to become heavy with moisture, that air making it's way west the the Australian continent, and unleashing it's aqueous fury on the eastern half of the continent. Many scientists now believe that this weather is heading towards the norm, as it is suspected of being brought on by Brazil's stripping of the Amazon jungle. It's a sobering thought. Many scientists are now attributing the full blame of climate change on land clearing, with carbon having a minimal effect if anything at all. Either way, we have to start condensing the earth's limited supply of carbon back into wood, it answers both theories.

Where I live we are not in the firing line of the weekend's rains. However, surrounding districts are on the outskirts of it. With the land so saturated, most of the rain runs off into the river systems. Our dams are overflowing and threatening floods downstream, quite ironic when you consider that the fires were brought on by high natural fuel levels after years of drought. Living in a town where two rivers meet, with minimal rain we are seeing rivers rising 7 metres (22 feet). Not good weather for golf.

tastetester61 62M

1785 posts
10/8/2022 11:20 pm

The above photos show various areas of one of the local flooded golf courses. The first photo is where the river walk becomes part of the river.

rydermantel 69M

25545 posts
10/9/2022 12:41 am

It looks devastating.

tastetester61 replies on 10/9/2022 1:17 am:
Not particularly devastating with regard to the photos I have shown of my home town. The flooding you see would normally only happen every 5 - 10 years. This is now happening 5 times per year. We aren't in an area which is hard hit, those areas have hundreds of families living in what is essentially a half length, single wide transportable. I know this because we are building them where I work. The flooding you see above will disperse over a few days without much damage. It will probably happen again before Christmas.

drmgirl622 68F

26134 posts
10/9/2022 8:08 am

Here in FL we had our usual rainy season and then Hurricane Ian just made things miserable.

tastetester61 replies on 10/9/2022 2:25 pm:
What you poor people went through, and are still going through, is terrible. I hope you managed to keep out of harm's way. I remember my visit to Coco Beach well, it reminded me of small beach towns I had visited travelling around Australia back in the 70s. I hope it wasn't too affected.


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