Rain

So on Friday we had another of those really wet days that seems to occur occasionally in Canberra.  It absolutely bucketed down pretty much all day, the storm drains went wild. I stayed inside working waiting for a break in the rain that didn't come until after three pm.  The Australian weather service runs a very good radar imaging mapping thingy so it was quite good to watch the bands of rain come across this corner of the country.  In some places in New South Wales it was the wettest day for thirty odd years, and the wettest October day for a hundred.  Lots of reports of flooding, and some high winds, which of course means falling branches and trees.  As I've said before, Australia has some seriously weak trees. But apparently the rain never made the coast, got stopped by the coastal ranges, so there you go, fine in Sydney, as usual!

I've included a few pics of the storm drains today, a leaf got stuck on my phone's camera lens so the images aren't great.  These pics are after the storm when I attempted to go home, and the water level in the drains was already doen by six inches or so from its peak when I cycled in, in a gap between bands of rain.  The drains are almost back to normal now, but they seem to take a few days to get right down.  Hopefully I'll include another post in a couple of days of some after pics (or should that be before?).

Anyway, Canberra is going to be very green this spring, its already getting that way.  The impression I'm getting is that its not going to be this way every year.  Its the beginning of a La Nina year (though in my climatologist opinion I'd say the Indian Ocean Dipole is having more of an effect right now) and so may remain fairly wet. Don't go booking any holidays in Queensland in the new year, thats for sure.