Water, water, everywhere...

[khiemtran]

We've had two days of severe storms in New South Wales, with ships running aground up the coast, cars being washed off highways and flooding and storm damage in the major cities. Our little area has escaped relatively unscathed. The only impact was, ironically enough, we lost our mains water for several hours yesterday. Fortunately, the problem of finding water when the stuff was bucketing from the sky was solved relatively easily. One thing we did find out though, was that our emergency supply of bottled water was all past its (or rather its bottles') expiry date. We now have a new stash for the next emergency, for a grand total of $4.70.

More storms forecast for this afternoon. It's actually quite amazing how much water has been coming down, even for Sydney.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Well, Australia went thorugh a long-enough drought that at least a couple of people should be happy about this, but of course, everything coming down in one go isn't overly productive...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, another of the ironies is that, in the middle of the worst drought since European settlement, Sydney itself has had lots of rain. It's just that it always seems to fall in the wrong place (rain falling on the city for example, currently goes straight out to sea).

OTOH, Tim Flannery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Flannery) made an interesting claim two months ago that this isn't really the whole story. He said the catchment areas of the Murray-Darling basin had actually received average rainfall for the last six months, and it was just that so much water had been taken out of system over the years that none of the new water was flowing out.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Well, that should be measurable, at least reasonably well, and it's not an unrealistic claim; it's what's happening in other parts of the world, too.

Hah. I *thought* the name sounded vaguely familiar. I haven't read any of his books, but I did read one that he's edited. Wikipedia to the resctue ;-)