Cleaning up flood damage ... while the sun shines

The day after the high winds and torrential rains Dave and I went south along the coast to check out conditions as the bad weather blew over.

One day after, the rivers were still right up to the roads in many cases. The "water over road" signs were still out, and you saw the lakes of mud where cascades had streamed across, but mostly -- mostly -- folks are down to a clean-up job, while emergency services work on removing broken trees. The good thing is, the community has come out in force, in the hardest-hit areas, to help people who've been underwater. One can only imagine what it must be like to be very old, or sick, or both, and have cold, mucky water rising around your knees and ruining everything you possess. The thought makes you shudder.

But in those hardest-hit areas, it'll to take a lot longer to fix the damage. I've borrowed this image from the ABC news website ...

Full credit to ABC News -- their copyright etc. 

...that is, or rather was, Montacute road. The floods must have washed out the foundations and the road collapsed. This one will take months to fix. If you'd like to read the whole story online, you'll find it here ... and one of their pictures was also on the front page of the state's newspaper:

Normally, Koalas don't pay much attention to rain. They live in the tops of trees and just dig in with their three-inch claws and go right back to sleep. But when the trees are really thrashing, they'll probably have to come down -- or perhaps this little guy was in a tree that actually fell. Either way, he found himself swimming for it, and taking refuge on a fence post; a very bedraggled little thing indeed.

(One hopes Fauna Rescue managed to get him to high ground, make sure he's okay. What makes koalas' lives doubly hard is that in a matter of weeks our temperatures will be so high, the forest so dry, their problems are all about thirst and bushfires; and koalas aren't as highly mobile as kangaroos, who can just get up and go when they must. Still, koalas are more agile, and much faster, than you'd guess. We've seen them on the ground and bounding along. They also have no road sense, and in fact many country roads have "look out for koalas" signs. It's quite an experience when one strolls out in the road right in front of you, in the dead of night. Good job on the brakes, Dave!)

Credits to the ABC photographers for this shot, and the image of Montacute Road ... or rather, the yawning pit where Montacute Road ought to be! See the link above.

Further south and  on the coast, the damage was more about erosion -- dunes have been cut away. It takes years to build up a good, strong system of dunes to reclaim and stabilize some coastline. One of these "super storms," as they're calling it, can undo the work of decades. One wants to say, "Well, the dunes will build back up, as they did the first time." Left alone, yes, they would. But these "storm of the decade" events are coming through every year now, and sometimes two or three times per year. The old "storm of the decade" is now commonplace; which bodes ill for the dunes. Sigh.

Here we are, finding the Okaparinga River returned to its channel today, leaving the surrounds a quagmire...

Home -- looks like it's been snowing. Hail, like the last such pics I posed? Nope. Blossom. The trees are stripped.

We were lucky. We suffered no damage whatever, and the worst we can complain of is that the wild winds stripped the trees of spring blossom. It was only September 2, fourteen days ago, when I posted this. All gone now. Well ... botheration. But yes, we were lucky -- and grateful for it...

And then the sun shone, the clouds vamoosed over the horizon, and now it's warm and bright. Dang.

Should South Australia build an Ark? Not a bad idea...

The driest state on the driest continent -- that's us. South Australia. Dryer than anyplace in Africa. Dryer than Arizona or New Mexico ... or, we were. You want proof that climate change is real? Look out of any window in this state, June to September. This is the third time we've been under flood this year. These events used to happen once n a decade! Call these the 'spring floods,' I guess -- to differentiate between the winter floods and the autumn floods.

So Dave had the idea of grabbing the cameras, jumping in the van and going out just about at the height (or depth) of the weather, and getting some pretty dramatic photos. Of course, it was COLD and WET --

-- but it was well worth doing a roadtrip around MacLaren Vale, just ahead of flooding that would actually close many of these roads. According to the time/weather boards on the roadside here and there, the temperature was eight degrees Celcius at about noon. That's something like 47 F ... and with the wind howling so hard, you could lean on it ... it felt like about five below! So --

And there's more rain on the way: it's hardly started yet!

On Thomas Hill Road ... in the clouds...

Our favorite coffee stop -- at noon! The Vintage Bean...

This creek is about to inundate a vineyard ...

About an hour later, this road was closed -- flooded right out.

We went out again the next day and had a look at the coast by Moana and Noarlunga. Hills residents were busy cleaning up the mess, but in 24 hours the roads were open again, and wouldn't you know it? The sun shone, the temperature was about 72 degrees, with light airs.

I'll post some of the coastal images tomorrow. Meanwhile, we've started work on the Ark...