Bloody Summer Storms...

[notsmokinjo]

OK so I know Aussies are super competitive about the weirdest shit... I mean what other nature on earth would be proud to say "yeah well we have 9 of the 10 deadliest snakes"..... I think its essentially because we have an identity crisis as a nation and have a national inferiority and confidence problem but that's a whole different post.... so anyway... Aussies like to win shit... doesn't matter if its our PM can skull a beer quicker than yours or the 4 x 100 freestyle relay at the Olympics... we like to compete, we like to win.... and Victorians are the worst and Melbournians are like the death con 5 of competativeness... we like to win more than any other state... we really like to beat Sydney and Adelaide, and Perth, and Tassie and Qld.... I mean Victoria and Melbourne are the best... omg see what I mean, its probably just a little big man thing... cos geographically we are the smallest... hmmm again another post... anywho..... Melbourne get ya shit together... Just cos QLD had bush fires.... we had to have bush fires.... just cos Sydney had flash floods... we had to have flash floods.. ya know what... SOME competitions .... really not worth winning..... and as for the fricking nob heads on roads when there is a meter of the wet stuff flowing through an intersection... why?, why the fruck do you think your shit heap, tin can of a midget car can safely make it through water so deep the frickin trucks wont try it.... and Melbourne.... you wanna have flash floods bigger and more destructive than Sydney??? Don't frickin do it at 5pm on a frickin Friday night 2 weekends out from Chrissy.... cos.... CHAOS!!!!!!!!!

 

So yes I had to cross Melbourne, through the floods, to get to the work Chrissy party... a 40min trip in peak hour (20min when not) took me just over 1.5 hours.... BUT..... I frickin beat most of the people who left 30mins before me (see crazy competitive... its just weird)... by more than 30mins.... why?????.....maybe my youth wasn't so misspent.... so while the thought of being drenched in gutter water now makes me cringe and shudder..... back in the day, when we ruled the streets on our BMX bikes we made it our mission to know all the best flash flood sites....as a grow'ed up this meant I could get in my car start driving where I had to go realise it was flooding fast and know how to get from A-B without dealing with flood waters.... for the most part.... and cos they are not standard roads all those morons who rely on GPS instead of proper paper maps (cos I had to check a couple of roads hadn't been turned into dead ends) got sent through the floods and I cruised to party without flooding the car or getting stuck in snarls. Oh and all you suckers who laugh at me for refusing to go to the underground train stations... hahahahahaha sucked in they locked you down there.

 

Melbourne last night:

 

[notsmokinjo]

Yep this kid is Aussie as.... kinda annoying until the very end then "Ha ha Suckers.".... So this was shot after the storm hit... all that rain basically fell in 45mins... then it drizzled on and off all night.

 

 

[jillar]

Wow, that's a crazy amount of rain in just 45 minutes!

[Reciprocity]

Weather all round the world is crazy and getting worse every year it seems. They used to call it Global Warming. Now it's called Climate Change, which is probably more appropriate. Insurance companies all around the world are struggling with how to cope in this new reality. Certain types of insurance will become very expensive in future.

[Doreensfree]

I Agree..this is scarey stuff...I'm so glad Nicky had left Melbourne just before this happened...

As her Mum...I would have been very worried ...crazy weather....

Good to hear your OK Jo....

UK is expecting sleet tomorrow ...it's bloody cold here in the pool...Brrrr

[notsmokinjo]

It was insane... and the amount of morons in little hatch back things that watch wheelie bins float by and still tried to drive down flooded streets... ha ha suckers.... it really was a crazy night.. so this is one of the roads I was sposed to take before I used my local knowledge and did the back street rat run....

 

 

 

The thing is its not cold... decent temp its a fact of Summer... once or twice a summer we get a massive storm and bag flash floods... at least the tide was out cos I reckon the Yarra woulda bust its banks if the tide was in.. OH geography lesson, the Yarra is the river that runs through melbourne... the other states all bag it because its 'so polluted'.... because its brown... the thing is it was brown over 2 hundred years ago before white people came here... sure its polluted... but has always been brown... since the very first settlers wrote about it... they call it the river that runs upside down... those other states just think that's witty... but the reality is it kinda does, the deeper you go the clearer it gets... its some internal current phenomenon.... so sydney and brisvegas... we love our dirty brown upside down river... oh an upstream as some nice tame rapids ....and there's a bit that even goes through a cave...

[Rozuki]

^^That is insane!!! Not only driving through it...but walking barefoot??? Where are the hipwaders or even rain boots? Gah......

 

[notsmokinjo]

 

29 minutes ago, Rozuki said:

Where are the hipwaders or even rain boots?

 

Um ... if we own them they were at home... cos the weather forecast was 80ish with possible showers... and right on 5pm knock off from work the storm hit melbourne and peeps had to get home... flash flood no chance to prep... suck it up and hope for the best... barefoot was probably safest.

[notsmokinjo]

Aussies often barefoot it... ya drunk... barefoot, its rainin and ya have heels, barefoot.... blisters?, barefoot.... nicking in to the servo/supermarket/shops, barefoot.... its hot, barefoot.... well only if its not thong melting hot or you'll get 3rd degree burns on ya feet.... but there are many occasions where shoes are optional.

 

I tend to drive barefoot, even in winter.

[Sazerac]

thinking of y'all

[joe]

Ummmm... whud she say!?? 

 

 

seriously... that’s a LOT of water in a short time... stay safe if you have to be out in it... 

[notsmokinjo]

All good now... you wouldn't even know there had been an issue. Probably have another one or 2 this season.

[JB 883]

Flooding sucks. Thank goodness it doesn't happen when it is freezing out.

At least notsmokinjo has the feet and is able to fly if waters get too wild.

[Tammy]

This is just like Mumbai however it floods even when the rains are what we expect each year, because guess what, the way we generate trash clogs all the drains, hence rainwater and silt cannot get out and floods the city.

 

As a planet, we are hurtling towards our own doom, without even realizing it (at least most people don't).

 

Glad to know you're ok Jo.

[notsmokinjo]

 

Oi @Cbdave , you all good with the storms is SEQ?

 

[Cbdave]

G’day Jo

Got a good bit of rain and lost power for a bit but survived intact. Still a hell of a lot of folk still without power from previous night. I know it sounds crazy but I still love a good storm...

C

[notsmokinjo]

14 minutes ago, Cbdave said:

I know it sounds crazy but I still love a good storm... 

 

You would have seen some rippers at sea... I always love watching a storm at seas (from the safty of shore)....  but I totally get what you mean, the storm we had the other friday that had half of the city underwater, there was some awesome lightening and thunder with that.. love when the thunder rattles the windows... after the rain settles everything always seems renewed after a storm.

[Cbdave]

G,day

Yes every sailor looks forward to a bit of “roughers”. Talking about that “Sydney to Hobart “ boat race starts Boxing Day. You have to be a bit mad to go through the bass straight in a small boat if the wheather turns:..

Bass straight is the worst stretch of water in the world. The wheathers got all the way from Africa to pick up momentum then hits the shallow waters of the great Australian Bight so the swells get big. Then it gets funneled in between the mainland and Tasmania. I’ve been through there on the old HMAS Melbourne the aircraft carrier. Waves coming over the bow then flowing down the flight deck and over the arse end. You gotta respect nature or she’ll kill you.

C

 

[notsmokinjo]

One of my Uncles did the Sydney to Hobart for years, in a midsize yacht not one of those big maxies even... and he did it in 1998, he never did it again after that.. Tried to do the Melbourne to Launceston but turned back early as it was triggering. I can't believe its 20 years this year since the killer race. How the hell the could have started that race with the weather forcast they had I'll never know.

[Cbdave]

G’day

which wheather report .....one the optimstic one or the pessimist one? 

Still hard to predict the wheather. 

How about Darwin and cyclone Tracy in 1974 that certainly caught everyone by surprise. Lost a secound cousin and his family in that one. 5 disappeared never a trace found. 

C

[notsmokinjo]

Tracey was shocking, and I'm sorry for you loss.  I was living in Darwin for the 20th anniversary and there were so many people who it was still so fresh in their memories, they talk about it like it was yesterday. My friends mum said she has never seen so many people crammed into planes as the ones that evacuated the women and children.  (For the non-Aussies Cyclone Tracey hit Darwin just after 3am on Christmas Day 1974... originally she went right past Darwin while still at sea but on Christmas eve she turned straight at her, she was so strong (with a tiny eye) that she had left 45% of the residents homeless before she even made landfall... so she hit about 3.05am and bty 3.10am all the recording equipment was destroyed... the sad thing is why the eye hit many people left their homes and were lost because they eye was so small... for 5 days after wards the only communication into and out of Darwin was morse code. 90% of the buildings in the city were destroyed and the entire civilian population was evacuated, many never returned. Australia often has Christmas Day tragedies, Bushfires down here and Cyclones up north, in 1971 Alethea hit just north of Townsville, traveled just inland and down then moved back out to sea when she dissipated. But Tracey was something else, when the recording equipment broke the readings were consistent speeds of 125mph with gusts of 150mph... and the edge of the eye was just 30miles from the centre. The Navy, Airforce and Army rebuilt that bloody town, and that's after they evacuated it and cleaned it up..forever grateful)

 

One year I was up there some tourists decided to decorate this monument to Tracey for Christmas with tinsel... it didn't go down well with the locals... and the old fellas sit guard over it now on the nights leading up to Christmas. In case you are wondering that is the base of a steel electricity pole bent by Tracey.

 

[Cbdave]

G,day Jo 

thanks... really appreciate the write up.

C