HawaiiBigSis
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Queensland Floods
- Thread starter HawaiiBigSis
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Because Australia is pretty flat, any floods sneak up on you gradually. The only people who get in trouble in floods are those who ignore warnings and try to drive through fords and get washed away. The only Queensland forumites I know of are in Brisbane, which is safe.
HawaiiBigSis
List Management
Yeah, people who ignore warnings and try to drive through fords deserve what they get...
The pictures I was seeing were people in boats floating past their houses, and that didn't seem as though they asked for it.
MG1962
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Yeah well I remember what happened in Victoria last time Queensland flooded...was not pretty
HawaiiBigSis
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So a little bit of googling indicates that Queensland floods pretty often.
Isn't there some sort of water containment system in place?
(And what happened in Victoria the last time Queensland flooded?)
Alan
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I think he means the Black Saturday bushfires.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires
Kid Eager
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Yes, there are dams where geography permits, but where's there's lots of flatness there's nowhere to put dams. You throw a bucketload of rain at a flat area with not much drainage and bad things happen.
What makes it more difficult is the El Nino - La Nina cycle, which has us alternating between long periods of drought, broken by heavy rain. Drought one minute, standing on the roof watching floodwaters go by the next....
Lake Eyre is Australia's lowest point, in the middle of South Australia. It is usually a dry salt basin, and there have been several land speed record attempts there. It's now getting close to it's highest water level, and these floods will eventually find their way there. I'd love to go there sometime when it's full.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Eyre
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
You could say that
Here are the ingredients:
The highest point in Queensland is Mount Bartle Frere. It's part of the Great Dividing Range which runs parallel to and not far inland from Australia's East coast, from Coen in Far North Queensland all the way down to where I live in Victoria.
Mount Bartle Frere
It's only 1,622 m (5,321 ft) high, which isn't much compared to, say, Mauna Kea's 4,205 m (13,796 ft), especially when you consider the area of the state that it doesn't quite tower over.
The area of Queensland is 1,852,642 km² (715,309 sq mi). Compare this to Alaska - 1,717,854 km² (663,268 sq mi) or France - 674,843 km² (260,558 sq mi).
The vast majority of it looks like this:
Thargominda
or this:
Camooweal
It's not all flat . . .
Mountains!
December-March is usually considered Monsoon season, it can start as early as November and run as late as April
Here are some rainfall figures from four major cities:
City
||
Rainfall
||||
|Brisbane||1,149.1 mm (45.24 in)|
|Townsville||1,136.7 mm (44.75 in)|
|Mackay||1,570.7 mm (61.84 in)|
|Cairns||2,006.3 mm (78.99 in)|
When all of that is added up together, you get this:
'Course there is.
The Weir at St George
Umm . . . yeah . . . well, moving right along . . .
Yep.
HawaiiBigSis
List Management
Oh, I remember the brushfires... but they weren't really related to the rain half a continent away, were they? (Except by accident of the calendar?)
And well, that's sorta the situation in the Los Angeles Basin as well. Pretty much flatland with a few hills poking up here and again. Long ago they created a drainage system to accommodate the occasional flood, so as to allow people to build houses in the (mostly, usually) dry riverbeds.
I won't say that it's been an unequivocal success, but it's helped some...
And well, that's sorta the situation in the Los Angeles Basin as well. Pretty much flatland with a few hills poking up here and again. Long ago they created a drainage system to accommodate the occasional flood, so as to allow people to build houses in the (mostly, usually) dry riverbeds.
I won't say that it's been an unequivocal success, but it's helped some...
Magenta
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Not causally related. In terms of climate change though, southern Australia is getting drier and the north wetter.
In Queensland we just build our houses (or used to) up on stumps to allow for the occasional inundation.
But sometimes there's too much water. All sorts of weather records have been broken lately. In Brisbane where I live we've just had the wettest December for 150 years (450mm). This Bureau of Meteorology map shows the December rainfall anomalies (variation from the long term average) for Queensland. And that comes after the wettest spring since records began in 1900.
The topography means that these river systems have vast catchment areas. Comparing this catchment map of Queensland with the current flood warnings shows the area currently affected. The Fitzroy River system alone is huge and the flood peak has not yet reached Rockhampton.
As bad as these floods are, at least the evacuations (sometimes of whole towns) have been more or less orderly and there is government financial assistance available for those affected, many of whom won't have flood insurance. It did make me reflect on the Pakistan floods and wonder what had become of the millions of people affected, many of whom appeared to have very little to begin with.
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HawaiiBigSis
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And Rockhampton goes under...
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
Map supplied by Bob Katter?
Magenta
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Some excellent photos from NASA satellites showing the flooding in the Fitzroy River basin. Interesting contrast between images from December and January.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=48420
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=48420
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh