Less than two years ago in August 2007 we had 16.75% left in the three larger dams in SE Queensland. Major works on a water grid, a desalination plant and a recycling plant were in progress, as well as longer term planning for the Traveston and Wyaralong dams were in train. We’d be OK if we could make it through to December 2008. Even though we had been limited to 140 litres per person per day, compared with the over 300 we’d been used to, the dams were going down by 0.035% each day on the average. With the aid of my calculator I figured that in 365 days time we would have 4% left. The big problem is that at 5% the dams would be technically empty.
The previous summer there had been virtually no inflow into the dams. Could that happen again? Armageddon was a real prospect. Indeed, I understand that the Government had called tenders for emergency measures. People were talking about bringing water in tankers from New Zealand, floating it down from Townsville in giant bladders and setting up temporary desalination plants in the Brisbane River. We put in a 10,000 litre tank, because ironically there was rain about, just in small quantities. Hereabouts it takes 50mm to wet the catchment and we never seemed to get more than 50mm.
Then this little beauty arrived out of nowhere:
A low pressure system formed off the coast , came to land near the border with NSW and proceeded northwards. We got 119mm over 7 days, but on parts of the Sunshine Coast records were broken and rivers flooded. From memory it was one of those 8 inches (200mm) in a day jobs. The Traveston Dam would have filled umpteen times. The Somerset Dam which gets its water immediately south of there caught a fair bit and our three dam total went up by about 3%.
After record dry we had a record wet. In SEQ a low like that had not appeared during August, the driest month along with September, since the 1880s.
We were further helped a bit by a low that floated through and then brought once in 30 year rainfall to the Hunter Valley, plus another that ended up off Goulbourn as a once in 10 year event.
By September 2008 with more exceptional weather we had made it to near 40% dam capacity. Then in November last year after good rains in October we had a series of dramatic storms including a supercell that broke through the bottom of the cloud and tore a strip through a half a dozen suburbs. Dam capacity rose to about 50% but dry weather set in again from early December when we had three months of around decile one rainfall.
During nine years from 2000 we couldn’t buy a drop of rain during autumn. It seemed an absolute law. But in early April at our place we got 218mm, in other places much more. Floods again. Now the dams were nudging 60%, the magic number for the water drought to be declared over. Never more would we have to worry.
Then not a drop for five weeks, actually most unusual for ‘normal’ Brisbane weather, until the heavens opened once again. At our place I tipped out 70mm yesterday morning. This morning it was 98mm. Then today a further 287mm, or about 11 and a half inches. That’s 385mm or over 15 inches in a bit over 24 hours.
The dams gained over 8% in a single night.
I’ve never experienced anything like it in these parts, not even close. By 5pm when the influence had hollowed out and moved a bit south I took this screen shot, courtesy of the BOM:
In the next few hours while we had dinner there was a further 75mm. But on the box tonight they told us the SOI was on the slide. The fact is, although they’ve predicted showers over the next week or so, we simply don’t know whether the rain will disappear again for six months or more. In 2004 we had average rain for the year but it was book-ended with two wet months at either end but the six winter months were the driest on record.
I think it’s called climate change.
We’ve had spurts of heavy rain in Sydney today as well as flooding in NE NSW. I just hope people don’t get complacent and think this is time to massively ease off on water restrictions. We should be looking at cities that can survive on low rainfall as the norm.
As a side note, i love when it rains these days because of our ability to track it via the BOM’s radar.
Jeez that’s a lot of rain. (Down in Melb it’s still dry’s a chip.)
wbb, we put in a swimming pool in 1999, which we’ve considered turning into a water tank or filling in and growing vegetables, but it would cost an arm and a leg. We also put in a drain 200mm below the top side of the concrete slab under the back quarter of our house. Flooding there is now, you would think, impossible.
We had to pump water from the pool down the creek four times today. The drain was overwhelmed by water that must be coming through underground under the house from the front yard about 10 meters away.
When I was reading the rain gauge to tip it out it was like someone was filling it with a watering can.
Unbelievable.
Unfortunately 9 people have died through drowning in flood waters in Qld since the beginning of the summer. But I think you’ll find that about half the joint is still drought declared.
Meanwhile, it’s just started raining in Perth for the first time in ages (might even be the first time this year? I forget…). We’ve had the driest autumn on record so far, and we’d need a Brisbane-style downpour to change that much. I know it’s bad for crops, but the selfish bit of me reckons we should keep on burning lots of coal if it’s gonna mean sunny T-shirt weather all the way to May 20th like this.
There’s another El Nino predicted down here in Victoria, sadly.
Yep, so far down in Victoria our rainfall’s been in line with the long-term averages. But after nigh on a decade of below-average rainfalls, the dams are all still near-empty.
Yep, so far down in Victoria our rainfall’s been in line with the long-term averages. But after nigh on a decade of below-average rainfalls, the dams are all still near-empty.
Which suggests there’s good value in rainwater collection that doesn’t need a big kick to get started… like rooftops. Old story, our 3000l of tanks are full because a couple of days of showers is usually enough to do that, and in Melbourne it’s relatively rare to get three months without any showers.
Only 110mm on the Range, c100 over most Toowoomba Regional Council dams, and the possibility water levels might edge back over 10%, saving TRC spending another motza drilling still more bores – tho not all bad …
The Wivenhoe pipeline to our dams is due to be completed by Jan 2010. Until then, we have to put up with the constant letter-writing/ public meeting-holding carping of the anti-recycling, anti-you-name-it diehards who are (claiming to be) scared that recycled water might be secretly – or overtly if we go back into drought – be added to it. So the last few years has been a Battle of Contrary Hopes; hoping for rain, but hoping it holds off long enough for the pipeline to be completed & water (recycled or not) irrevocably reaching our treatment plants. At least the years of severe drought have left SE Qld with an excellent “water grid” & recycled water for industry (inc power houses) and farms, and water-diversion infrastructure if drought returns.
Meanwhile, in the Would you believe it?, category, the city that voted against recycling (over 67%), and the huge pile of state & federal funding promised (Tho by Howard, so it was probably “non core”), have lived years with under 15% dam capacity and desperate water restrictions (until the state gov came to our rescue) are now carping & whining about having to pay “too much” for the (Satae gov) Wiverhoe pipeline! As if the entire area’s future didn’t depend on it during droughts! As if it wasn’t voter’s fault! Ya havta live here to believe it!
PS: I’m old enough to remember the positive impact (on water-& “the crap from the roof and otherwise gets into tanks”-borne illnesses, especially the dramatic fall in child hospitalisation & deaths from Gastroenteritis and similar illnesses) of the compulsory removal of sub-tropical, mosquito-, flying fox- & possum-infested Brisbane’s tanks once the new water systems started flowing (late 1940s). Several classmates had lost siblings & I almost lost a young cousin. I’d have to be reduced to sponging the body with bottled water to install one.
From creaky memory, Sydney dams were down to about 30% two years ago but then we had a very rainy month and then more winter rain and by end of 2007 they were up in the mid-60s%. A few days ago I saw on the weather report that they had fallen back down to low 50s, but we’ve also been having heavy rain this week – though the joke in Sydney is that the rain never falls over the catchment area.
When I flew into Avalon airport in Melbourne at Easter, it was like landing on the moon – shockingly dry and denuded.
No, it’s called “weather”.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
What, just for Victoria? That’s curious.
It is climate change but not due to carbon dioxide. Australia tends to go through periods/cycles of wetter years followed by drought years. The last shift/cycle change was in the late 1970s due to changes in ocean circulation/PDO. We may be back to a wetter 30 years period like the period from the late 1940s through to 1976. These issues with data are often discussed at http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog .
DeeCee, I’m sure someone is writing a book about the Toowoomba saga as we speak!
Moz, we had a lot of tanks installed in Brisbane in 2007, and when the wet came I referred to in the post I remember a calculation that the tanks collected a total equivalent to one day’s supply. They have their place, but more as designed into new developments rather than retrospectively. DeeCee our tanks have so many filters on to keep the vermin out that the water backs up in the pipe in heavy rain. And then you are only allowed to connect to the laundry and the toilet. You can’t wash yourself in the stuff.
Unfortunateley one man was killed yesterday, sitting at his desk.
Plenty of pics here but a bit of a mess with heaps of duplicates and new ones being interpolated into the sequence by the minute. Otherwise I’d link to a few.
Great pic at the beginning of this gallery from the supercell storm last November.
Bird of paradox, the dry autumns are pretty well established in southern Australia, I’m afraid. For while they weren’t so much here, but now they seem to. Events like the one we just had seem to come from nowhere if you are watching the surface charts. They seem to depend on upper atmosphere troughs showing up to combine with particular surface conditions.
Helen, if it’s El Nino for you, it’s even more so for us.
@ 11 and 12, go chase yourselves.
We know that there has been variability, big droughts before etc. It’s when the weather builds up into a statistical pattern that starts to conform with the way the global patterns are shifting, and that conforms with the expectations of changes due to global warming and climate change.
But I’ll leave that one to the climate scientists.
Dennis, you link to your sight notorious for selected data and a blinkered view. Better not to pollute your brain.
Brian,
Your remark that “The Traveston Dam would have filled umpteen times” is accurate because it doesn’t take much rain to fill large shallow dams. But these type of dams also mean that the evaporation rate is higher. By the Govt’s own EIS the estimated evaporation rate for Traveston is at 1.5m per annum, now with an average depth of just 5m at a full supply level it raises the question is this the best way to supply further water for SEQ. I would argue that there are better ways that are less environmentally, socially and economically reckless than what Labor has proposed here in Queensland.
There’s been rain here in New England since Monday, getting increasingly more heavy and consistent. Certainly no sunshine – grey and cloudy. There was a report last night we should expect 120 km. p.hr winds here across the bottom of a TV preogram, but they ain’t come yet. It was enough to keep me off the computer all night.
Hope everybody in Queensland stays safe and there’s no more tragedies.
The patterns are also consistent with no climate change, Brian. That’s the point. Droughts and flooding rains, Brian, droughts and flooding rains. It was true in Mackellar’s time, a century ago, and it’s true today.
Here in a well-known green enclave in far northern NSW there are 130km/h winds, trees down everywhere, powerlines down, cars crushed, schools closed, and 100mm of rain overnight.
Check out the Brisbane radar. The Tweed coast is copping a drenching right now (10:45).
Looks like another winter of nasty ECLs like 2007.
Fyodor @ 17, I’m sorry I just don’t have time to respond to that stuff.
Brian, don’t be sorry. Really, it’s ok to ignore or delete those comments.
Melbourne this morning is just foggy. The sort of fog that wets the roads and everything else. But to make up for that NZ is also copping a heap of weather at the moment. Snow at sea level, even.
carbonsink, yes it’s moved down your way. They are still saying we might get some more here, but it doesn’t look like it today.
Dave G @ 15, there’s always plenty of rain coming down somewhere in SEQ over the period of a year, but suitable dam sites are in short supply. I agree with you in general about Traveston. With the water grid, you’d have to use it first, but I don’t think Traveston water will be available right across the SEQ area. It’s not a good site, is environmentally problematic and would inundate some very good farming land.
Longer term I think desal will come to be seen as OK as long as they are careful about disposing of the salty brine and use renewable power to run it. One decent desal plant, and they’ve reserved about half a dozen sites, would yield more than Traveston.
Routine apology, Moz.
Carbonsink #18, does that make it twice or three times in a single year for “once in a hundred years” flooding?
Rain was predicted for every day in Melbourne last week and there was nothing. There always seems to be nothing.
Yes, There’s another El Nino predicted down here in Victoria, sadly should have read “There’s another El Nino predicted for this winter which will affect us very badly down here in Victoria, sadly”. Because of not having had the flooding rains and all.
Just curious, but do you really consider poetry the highest form of fact-making? I know of people who do, but would you count yourself among them?
Paul @ 23:
My post was a bit of a rambling narrative, but one aspect of climate change is that we are to expect a statistically greater chance of extreme events – not necessarily records, but in the 90 to 95 or greater percentile range.
Subjectively that seems to be the way it’s working out. It’s up to the climate scientists to do the stats and tell us when they mean something.
That rather depends on what you think “fact-making” entails, deekaydotayu.
The only facts I was referring to were the prevalence of, yes, droughts and flooding rains in Australia a century ago. The fact that we still have droughts and flooding rains in a country known to be prone to droughts and flooding rains doesn’t tell us anything about any mooted climate change, does it?
The mere existence of “droughts and flooding rains” both a century ago and today is consistent with either ‘climate change’ or ‘no climate change’. You would need a study of the frequency of “droughts and flooding rains” over the ime period to test the hypotheses.
An increase in the number of extreme events is generally supportive of the climate change, although no subsitute for detailed analyses.
This is all rather moot, though, because those detailed analyses do in fact exist and strongly support the existence of climate change over the last century.
I think it’s called Climate Change
It was obvious that this entire post was leading up to that line. But what evidence is there that this is anthropogenic? The last time there was this much rain, and such irregular weather patterns, did they call it ‘Climate Change’ then?
One of the disadvantages of continuous rain is that one’s washing builds up. Surprisingly, the sun came out today, so I got three loads in and out of the washing machines and onto the lines.
Martin B, yes. But for many denialists even the argument has moved on. Many accept climate change but not AGW.
Let’s be clear about this, Martin B. Are you asserting that there are detailed analyses on drought patterns in Australia that “strongly support the existence of climate change over the last century”? If so, please produce some references, as I’d be very interested to read them.
Are you a climate change denialist or a devils’ advocate Sideshow Bob?
Paul @23 and Brian @27:
The Northern Rivers of NSW is rarely short of rain, even when SEQ is bone dry. Perhaps that’s why this area was a bloody great rainforest before European settlement.
However, the series of intense ECLs over winter 2007, and again this week, is pretty unusual. Once in 100 years? Who knows.
Stopped raining here, looks like Yamba and Coffs are next in line for a drenching.
Al contrario, sei l’avversario. Don’t be so modest Sideshow.
That’s my name three times. What can I do for anyone? Apart from the dams, who’s thirsty?
J @ 30, when I was very young in the 1940s on the land we had some very severe droughts. A common opinion was that it was because of all the guns they fired off in WWI. Later in the 50s of course it was the bomb.
Now some say it’s not happening, some say it’s the sun, some say its lots of things too hard to calculate. Anything but us.
This post isn’t about proving or disproving AGW which is a boring argument.
I so knew you would show up!
Please ignore them folks, or I swear I’ll go through and delete the whole bleeding lot!
Funny, that sounds like parts of Europe in the last decade.
It seem to me that what you’re trying to say is that there are no weather conditions possible that would point to climate change. It’s a bit like how the YECs seem to argue that no volume of fossil records would prove evolution. In a way they’re right, but there’s so much more evidence from other fields of study.
Sorry about the derail Brian.
From what I remember about Geography a 1 in 100 year flood was statistically only likely once every 100 years based on previous rainfall averages, but this didn’t mean that you would only have a flood that big once in 100 years.
On the bright side at least it wasn’t a 1 in 500 event, those suckers are huge.
I think forecasting regional changes in climate and indeed weather is particularly fraught. Beyond the large global trends I haven’t paid much attention to it, but I understand most models use something like a 300km square grid, which is very coarse. It may confirm the large trends, like the socalled (and real) expansion of the tropics, the migration polewards of mid-latitude (not sure whether it’s designated sub-tropical or temperate, I think the former) dry areas like the Sahel and the Sahara, plus the band across northern Mexico and southern USA, and the similar migration of the circulation systems which we used to call the ‘roaring forties’. That last one is very noticeable in that larger highs than some decades ago, and indeed larger lows, now travel well below our continent.
Under these circumstances you are likely to get less precipitation in the south. Ask the farmer from Birchup(? it’s in the Mallee) they had on Bush Telegraph the other day who has had crop failure 5/7. Of course it’s strictly too early to tell, but climate scientists seem to be saying now, yes, it’s happening, in a way we didn’t think it would for another 50 years.
And if they turn out to be wrong on the specifics it doesn’t actually cancel AGW.
In a place like SEQ there are many micro climates. For example, the Gold Coast was dry for a number of years, with the dam empty and water being pumped from Brisbane. Then they had half a metre in one day and the dams have been full ever since. The models are too general to give specific guidance under these circumstances.
No I am saying that the detailed analyses of climate indicators overall – especially temperature and rainfall – strongly support the idea.
Drought per se is a fairly coarse-grained phenomenon and so getting a clear trend from drought alone is going to be tricky. But trying to do so is going about it somewhat arse-about.
FWIW I do tend to side with those who think that we shouldn’t point at every extreme event and say “this is because of climate change”. On the other hand saying “climate change means more of this” is quite defensible.
Mindy, I’m not a statistician, but those 1 in 100 year things always intrigue me. I guess that it means that over a very long time (1,000 years? 5,000 years?) the event happens once in a hundred years and yes it can happen say 3 years in 10 within that. But who thinks climate is stable even over 500 years?
The heat wave in Europe in 2003 was said to be a 1 in 30,000 years event. That takes us back to the ice age for chrissake! Or maybe it’s just a way of saying it’s very, very rare, and it’s an attempt to express the rarity mathematically.
I’m actually with you there. But when the climate changes the effect are ‘global’ as it were and it’s nonsensical to say, climate change had nothing to do with this event. As the NOAA did about Katrina, perhaps to retain their funding from the Bushies.
The ’1 in 100′ statistic gets much abused in the media. Technically it refers to rainfall for a specific period of time for a specific point. As most extreme rainfall events (especially for short durations, e.g. an hour or two) are pretty localised, you would expect a 1-in-100 year event for a set duration to occur somewhere in an area the size of metropolitan Brisbane perhaps once or twice a decade on average, and even more frequently if you bring in different durations. (To illustrate that, a fall of 100mm in an hour, and one of 500mm in 24 hours spread fairly evenly through those 24 hours, could both be 1-in-100 year events at a particular place).
There’s a CSIRO study which finds a likely increase in extreme rainfall events in SE Queensland, even with a background of a likely decrease in average rainfall. If you want to go through it you can find it here.
Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100-year_flood. It’s a statistics thing.
That’s fascinating, thanks, Blair. I’ll read it at my leisure. The notion of a likely increase in extreme rainfall events even with a background of a likely decrease in average rainfall seems a familiar theme.
Will no inflow into the dams happen again? Well, yeah, that’s pretty much a no-brainer. The entire east coast of Australia’s been undergoing a very significant drying pattern for many decades now, a pattern which overrides the 20-30 year north-south storm band movement that Dennis Webb fails to understand in post #12 (and while CC plays a part, things like widespread clearing are very likely to have stuffed around with rainfall patterns in QLD in particular).
Bottom line: Intense weather events will continue to occur (and severity and frequency may increase under business-as-usual), but the climate here will remain highly variable and generally quite dry. We need the infrastructure in place to capture and store the big inputs when they do come along. Right now, there’s a lot of very nice water rushing into the bay and taking a load of also-rather-useful sediment with it.
As for those whining about the structure of Wivenhoe et al, you might want to consult a topo map of SEQ some time. There really aren’t any ‘ideal dam’ locations in the area. If the land is steep enough, the valley volume will be too small; if the valley has an appropriate volume, it’ll be pretty broad and hey presto high evaporation. And then you have to think about whether your proposed location will get any rain, which adds another layer of fun times.
Honestly, my inner enviro-science nerd gets the irrits at headlines like the one on this post (no offence or anything, but…). The drought isn’t over. Drought is the default state around here, the norm. Its been punctuated by a wet event which will provide short term relief. That relief can be stretched over time with appropriate management in place.
Grumphy, I agree. Droughts are rare in Australia but the usual run of weather is quite dry. Basically it’s misuse of language that would be called special pleading if it wasn’t our leaders doing it. That said, they’d look even sillier running round going “oh no, we need a ‘normal weather’ assistance package for our farmers” and “unexpected normal weather means the dams are empty”. Hence the lies about droughts…
Grumphy, I probably didn’t make it clear, but the Water Commission had long deemed 60% dam levels as the time when the water drought would be over and they could manage things from there until 2050, if you believe them. That’s where the title came from. We quite dramatically sailed through the 605% barrier, the last I heard was 72% and inflows are likely to last for another week.
Also the last I heard the Govt was not going to ease restrictions further until December, although the water commission had said with 60% things would be fine.
For those who don’t know we will have a permanent ceiling of 230 litres per person per day. I don’t think that will worry anyone because usage is still down around the 133 level, below the most severe 140 restriction.
I agree with what you say about sites. If you look at the large area south of the Brisbane River down to the Gold coast, a huge amount of water goes straight into the bay.
I just hope people don’t get complacent and think this is time to massively ease off on water restrictions – thewetmale
Err, why? If the dams get full then further rain will just run out to sea. Why shouldn’t people pass it through their gardens first?
It smells of a puritanical mindset. Telling people to have ideologically correct behaviours is only sensible if such behaviours are actually necessary.
derrida derider: I’m not sure how you get from “72% full” to “water just running out to sea”. Until we have decent long term weather forecasting easing off on water restrictions when we still have dam capacity unfilled is just foolish. So once we get to 105% or whatever the magic number is, keeping mild levels of water restrictions in place makes sense. Especially if there are people like you who want to brave the storms to water their gardens…
We just got a water bill… $26 for the quarter, roughly 160 litres per day. I suspect that we could reach 140, but I’d have to have shorter showers and I’m not keen on that. I suspect the rest of the household likes their showers too. Maybe once I get the bugs worked out of the pedal powered pump we can recirculate shower water to maximise time in shower per litre consumed.
dd, I’m not sure how the water gets from the garden to the sea.
Generally speaking, I don’t think a lot of garden watering goes on in Brisbane, even to the allowed limits, which have always been there, except by people who have installed their own tanks. There were periods in the last few years that were very dry, so a lot of drought vulnerable stuff, including mature trees, just died. The nurseries have a lot of drought resistant plants for sale.
So it’s interesting to see whether watering gardens will ever return to any extent. The 230 litre limit allows quite a bit if you are careful in other ways. I’m betting that there has been a long-term change of habits.
Funny – I’m certain that the QLD Government had said water restrictions willbe eased once 60% capacity was reached – now it is above 70% and climbing with a number of dams at 100% and still they won’t lift them.
Liars.
Razor, subject to correction, I think it was the Queensland Water Commission rather than the government that promised relief at 60%. Of course, as promised before the election the QWS is having its wings clipped and many functions transferred back to the bureaucracy.
Stephen Robertson currently Minister for Natural Resources, Mines & Energy and Minister for Trade, and prior to the election generally regarded as a dud at Minister for Health, said in April when we hit 59.6% and looked as though we were going to edge over 60, made a decision, perhaps a first for him, that we should be a bit conservative and wait until we were safely over 60%.
Right now Bligh has declared a state of emergency as there is still a lot of chaos around. I believe, for example, 100 sewage pumps failed. SES has responded to just over half the 2000 calls for help. After things settle a bit they might decide to relax the restrictions, but I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal to anyone because we are way down on the currently permissable 200 litres pppd anyway.
It’s a bit like how the YECs seem to argue that no volume of fossil records would prove evolution.
[Snork]
Wrt a lot of water going into the bay, to some extent that’s normal. The Logan river managed to output an equivalent volume to the entire southern bay during a flood event only a year or so ago, along with a lot of sediment. That’s a pretty good effort for a little coastal river. Still, if we’re clever we can snag a lot of that output for our own uses, and that has the added bonus of keeping the seds and the pollutants they carry out of the bay.
I’m not sure what the fuss is about the continuing water restrictions, tbh. I honestly don’t consider them remotely hard to meet, and they’re an amazing example of strong leadership engendering lasting behavioural change in response to environmental need, to the benefit of all of us. Even though the restrictions were eased ages back, consumption rates have remained low, and what’s really interesting is that its the first time that consumption has broken with availability since they started to track that data.
I work in an NRM job, and let me tell you its really depressing most of the time to watch people just consume until they can’t any more simply because a resource is present. The water restrictions story showed that we can be better than that, and its *such a freakin’ relief* to realise that we’re not irredeemable en masse.
Oh, and speaking of Robertson, before we slag him off too much I should probably mention that he was NRM minister (or whatever they called it back then) before landing health, and was apparently not too bad at it. His landing the health profile seems to have been a case of ‘promotion to one’s basic level of incomptetence’, as I understand it.
What is worth mentioning is that State taking over the water grid from local government in SEQ could potentially be a Bad Thing despite the advantages of centralisation and integration, since a lot of institutional knowledge about the condition of the infrastructure (and how to maintain it efficiently, and fix it when it goes bust) is now gone. That often isn’t stuff you can cover in a 2 day training course; you need experience. Oh, and money to actually do things. That’s a little thin on the ground in the public service right at the moment
The views of insurer Peter Hoeppe are decidedly on-topic.
Thanks Brian,
We (from Victoria) just enjoyed a 5 day holiday on the Sunshine Coast.
We travelled north for the warm seas and the sunshine of course, but the torrential drenching (esp Monday & Tuesday) was a wonder to behold. Kayaking one morning in the downpour was glorious. Safe, no winds. Very good to hear the Premier declare the end of the SEQ drought.
cheers
The dams are over 73% and it looks as though they will go to 75. Apparently we use 1% per month, so that’s about 6 years supply. I think the idea was that if the dams get down to the 50-60 level they start building extra capacity. It takes a couple of years to build a desal plant.
That was in the QWS draft report. What became of that in terms of waccepted government policy I don’t know.
In Lismore levied narrowly held. The water rose 10.4 metres. Another 0.2 and it levies flown over the levies.
Mass evacuations in Grafton.
At least three Sunshine Coast beaches were closed because of contamination by sewage. 50 homes also had sewage appearing in the yard or even welling up in drains inside houses. Water penetration of the sewage lines is the problem through illegal connections, holes in the pipes or lack of pumping capacity. Heard that on radio. Then Brisbane people rang up reporting the same problem. Said to be 100 homes affected.
Council reckoned too bad until we fix the pipes etc. A plumber says all you need is a reflux valve.
Paul @ 62, Peter Hoeppe was on Late Night Live as well. The guy was originally a meteorologist. They’ve built up the biggest data base of disasters in the world.
He stressed on LNL that a gap was opening up between the number of events that were weather-related as distinct from those that were geophysical in character.
I thought his point that we could expect in Qld more events where we got up to a third on annual in 24 hours was interesting. They’ve analysed the risks for every place on earth and put it on a CD which they’ll send you free if you ask.
Thanks so much for the Peter Hoeppe link Paul@62
I’ve suspected that insurance agencies and their actuaries have a better picture of what’s going on than most. Just as they saw the emergence of smoking as a problem, with a more likely chance to die and what from if a client was a smoker, I would think they have great stats regarding severe weather events requiring payouts.
I had the fortune of yarning to a bloke working for a big insurance agency in Mar08 and I floated this idea past him. He said that the budget had already been blown for the year – funnily enough not by the Qld floods Jan08, although that helped, but by hailstorms in Canberra and Sydney.
Dave, with insurance you have to be careful as to whether they are talking about meteorological events or payouts or meteorological events that generate payouts. The payouts can be affected by such things as property prices, also whether such properties have been built where they are in harms way.
There are also plenty of extreme events that wouldn’t expect to cause a payout.
So even when Hoeppe said “weather related events have quadrupled” you have to assume he most likely means weather events that generated claims, which is not quite the same as extreme events. It’s a pity the interviewer didn’t press this point.
Storage volume expressed as a percentage of the full storage capacity is completly missleading as some storages are ‘big’ (relative to average annual inflow/supply and average annual usage/demand) while others are ‘smaller’ or ‘small’ – again relative to respective inflows and usages.
So – some will have relatively quick turnover – meaning they’ll fill and even spill while some other ones would always stay between say 20-30% (of the full storage) to 60-70%. These are not – by any means – comparable to the other ones that fill and spill (and empty) at a different pace. So – in very simple terms – to say “it’s 70% full” means almost nothing without qualifying that statement comparing it with a long term storage volume.
If your storage tends to stay at say 45% with maximum observed at around 70% and minimum observed at 20% it’s completly usless to compare current storage volume with its full storage capacity… It is even worst to compare that storage (and its current storage volume) with some other that’s, just by chance, at the same time also at 45% of its full storage while being one of the storages quick to fill, spill and empty with maximum historic storage volume at 100% (or few percents more, as it’s been flooded not just once in history) and minimum easily down below 20%…
Add to this picture federal politicians willing to exchange info on ‘their’ respective storages without having a slightest idea about this concept and you’ll see even more of desal plants and more of rain that tends to fill local storages “quickly” or just too quick for politicians’ taste…