I'm in Queensland, of course, and where I am we've had rain regularly for over six months. The ground is so saturated that it's no wonder that run-off from places like here is causing flooding.
But what happened in Toowoomba was the most devastating. Toowoomba is an inland city right on the top of the range with a population of 80,000. Some say they had 6" of rain inside an hour there, the place just copped a total bucketing and flash flooding damaged a lot of the place.
It was the run-off to the east of this that caused most loss of life. Most of the run-off went west, and it will continue to head west for many weeks to come, it runs into the Murray-Darling river system that comes out near Adelaide.
But that run-off to the east rushed down the mountains and boomed into creeks and rivers that were already brimming. One little town about 20 miles away had the water rise over twenty feet in seven minutes!
More bodies are bound to be found, but then there's the stories of cattle dozens of miles out to sea further north, where floods have been on for weeks, roads that are cut and expected to remain so for a month or more, towns that are having to batten down for another flood to come through after just cleaning up from earlier flooding.
This is the driest continent on earth copping solid rain, almost all over the continent, that's almost unprecedented in our history.
Last edited by Ray Bell; 01/19/11 05:42 AM.
