Thread: Drought up north this down south

Yip, pretty bloody wet down here the last few days!

_DSF5158 by Ben, on Flickr
_DSF5174 by Ben, on Flickr
_DSF5218 by Ben, on Flickr
_DSF5325 by Ben, on Flickr

As far as the climate change question goes - I've been in Gore about 10 years and this is the biggest flood I've seen here in that time (peaked at 2500 cumecs and 4.8m above normal level), but its smaller than 1999 (and lots of earlier big floods like 78 and 84) and this time of year often sees the heaviest rainfall here. So it was probably due for one. The biggest I've seen photos of was 1913, before they had floodbanks on the river.

Urban flooding is probably getting worse/more frequent, but thats related to more development with higher densities, bigger houses and more hard surface driveways etc - so the rain runs off faster and more of it goes straight into the stormwater system instead of soaking into the ground. Combine that with decades of councils not investing in upgrading stormwater systems and its no surprise that you get surface flooding after heavy rain because the pipes can't handle the extra flow. New developments have to meet higher standards (the developers are the ones paying of course), but they're still feeding into the same old downstream network.