When one lives in the Tropics, the wet season must
eventually be experienced.
For the past
few months every Aussie has commented on the peculiar lack of wetness during this wet
season.
It seems Mother Nature is now
trying to make up for lost time.
The rain
began on 6pm Wednesday and literally has not abated for the next 48 hours.
Someone recently asked me for my definition
of “monsoon”.
With a nod to Justice
Stewart, I replied “I don’t know if I can categorically define monsoon, but I’ll
know it when I’m in it.”
Well, we’re in
it.
The first 24 hours brought 7 inches
of rain.
The next 24 hours, ending at
6pm Friday, brought another 5 inches.
They
are still forecasting another 3 inches of rain on Saturday.
That’s more rain in 3 days than what Chicago receives
in April, May, June and July combined.
According to
this article,
the heaviest period for Gladstone was 4 inches of rain in a 6 hour window.
The source of all this wetness can be traced
to Oswald.
Old Hurricane (Cyclone to
Aussies) Oswald hit Cairns in northern Queensland, and virtually the entire
eastern seaboard is now feeling the effects.
Long story short, I have extra time on my hands, so I thought I’d temporarily assume web logging duties.
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| I've never been able to keep the "Red Sky" adage straight in my head, but this is the last moment of weather we've had where a raincoat was not required. |
I stepped out our front door at 3:40 Thursday morning
directly into 2 inches of standing water.
I’m not sure there’s a good way to start a day when getting up that
early, but having cold, drenched feet is definitely not it. On the bus, I heard news that the Gladstone
airport had closed. When I arrived on my
jobsite, I learned that the other two big projects on the island had closed for
the day. Our crew left in the morning,
while I stayed around for a few meetings and spent the rest of my time checking
the radar and wondering that if Gladstone’s current rain rate was color coded
as orange, what exactly the color black represented. I assumed the apocalypse. Katie emailed me that our new moat had risen
another inch and was threatening to leak in through our front door. After a few frantic emails and phone calls, a
man arrived to fix the drainage problem.
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| Jackie helping to de-clog the drain. |
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| The moat continued to the front yard. |
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| Katie "hurricane proofing" our house. Notice the towels by the door and the couches on soup can stilts. |
Early Thursday afternoon it was announced that higher winds were
expected the next couple days, so the site would not be open until
Tuesday.
Normally this news would be met
with the type of joy experienced by school-aged kids right before summer
break.
However, shortly after this we
discovered many of the surrounding roads were in jeopardy of being flooded.
It’s a major holiday weekend in Australia -Saturday
is “
Australia Day"
(which is not the equivalent of our Independence Day - it’s more like our Columbus Day) and many
people have had to cancel their plans, Katie and I included.
In early October we spent the afternoon in
Noosa to break up the long drive from Brisbane.
It
was raining then, too, but it still made a very favorable impression and we were
excited to book a trip back there at the first opportunity.
Since
Noosa is mainly a beach town, and hurricanes don’t usually offer the best beach
weather, Katie and I decided to cancel our trip.
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