Qld Floods

The catastrophic floods currently devasting seventy-five percent of Queensland, have cost 15 lives so far with another 51 still reported as missing. One of the people previously reported as missing, has been found dead eighty kilometers down river from where they were last seen.  That will give you some indication of the strength of the water.

Here is the link for the latest news report:  http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/body-found-80km-away--some-flood-victims-may-never-be-found-say-police-20110114-19qsu.html

So what is a flood?

A flood is when more water is to be found in a river, creek, dam or water-course than what the containment banks can hold back. A containment bank is like the sides of a bowl. These sides are what hold the liquid inside the bowl. When there is more liquid in a bowl or container than what those sides can hold, the outpouring is said to be a flood.

Now some of these floods are a slow rising and overflowing of the water over the sides. These can be devasting but at least anyone in the path of the overflow has some time to escape from the water. These are usually called a “Riverine flood”

The other type of flood is a flash flood.   

Now as the name suggests, these hit within minutes and no-one has a chance to escape from them.  They are like a Tsunami of water.

This type of flooding rarely happens in Australia but this time it happened in the Lockyer Valley just west of Brisbane. This flood 2 days ago killed 13 people and wiped the town off the map.

Flooding is what happens when the water that has escaped its containment banks spreads over the countryside. It will always follow a dried up water-course or some other low-lying ground first until it grows too big for that to contain or hold back the water. Then the water just keeps on rising higher and higher until it peaks; which means it has reached its maximum level.

When the flood waters start to go down, the water level is said to be receding. Sometimes this can take hours while other times it can take weeks.

The Qld weather is normally warm and balmy; “beautiful one day, perfect the next”.  The weather is now being monitored very carefully in case there is more rain in the catchment areas of our inland river systems. If more rain falls in those areas, whole towns will be flooded again so the weather is being very closely monitored. 

Due to the soils and ground being so saturated with water, it won’t take much more rain to cause another flood. The water can’t soak into the soil and the run-off goes into the lowest lying ground which is our creeks and rivers. Then these overflow and we have another flood.