Some flood pics from Milton Rd (Brisbane)

[Matt Wastell]

Hi all

We woke to some flooding near our neighbourhood. We are fine at Paddington (fingers crossed) but down the road at Suncorp Stadium was another problem (it will get worse too). Milton Rd is suffering too.

Stay safe all!

[h0ughy]

looks very surreal

[GrahamL]

Brings back some memories Matt,My father was a engineer with harbours and marine and had to through the 74 flood access and
check on numerous decomissioned vessels that were tied up along the river and ,I went along,sometimes by flooded streets or by boat .

I wonder what will happen to those really flood prone areas around tennerife ,that area was all industry back then, as the land was very low lying,, looks to be mostly residential blocks these days ?

[Lee]

Some relatives of mine are having de ja vu this am, moving their goods out of their house, which flooded to the upstairs eaves in 74..... The 2011 damage bill will make 74 look like a puddle I would think, given the population/infrastructure increase over the past 40 years.
I guess when it came to the *real* acid test, Wivenhoe couldn't cut it.

[h0ughy]

I beg to differ;) but I say this reservedly - I think the dam is doing its job :question: - you cant plan for months of heavy rain and it has held back a massive couple of serges, but the golden rule - all drainage is designed to fail - and it has reached is safe operating load capacity (I am sure there will be more than a few nervous engineers), that’s why dams have spillways and over capacity floodways around the dam. It’s holding back a huge volume of water. If that were let loose you would have an even lager devastating flood. I recon that dam must be vibrating with all that water cascading out.

That said there are probably some parts of the catchment below the dam that would go under even if all the water was retained in the dam, you cant stop that.:help:

Its not a good situation up or downstream, and i hope that they find all who are missing in a safe area

[Lee]

I guess what I'm saying is that this weather, although unusual of late, is what is expected in the longterm weather cycle in Brisbane, past floods 1890-odd, 1930-odd, 1974 and now 2011 - about a 40 year pattern.
Maybe SEQ water was so happy to have a full dam that it was let get just a tad too full of past months??

Maybe this is just a freak event, but is seems to have come as expected as per the last century's record.....

[Analog6]

It is not a freak event, but an extremely heavy la Nina pattern. These heavy patterns have occurred before but it is over 25 years (I read somewhere recently) since we have had such a severe one. As it has been particularly long and extended the ground is all saturated so it is all run off - that's what caused the Toowoomba severe flash flood (it is not and never will be any sort of tsunami!).

Climate change (a more useful term than 'global warming') predicts these type of extreme events. The first decade of 2010 was the warmest globally so far since records have been kept, although only slightly warmer than the decade before (something like 0.15 degrees). Still, the planet is on a warming cycle, summers will get hotter and wetter for the nrothern half of the continent and winters colder and dryer - but these are all generalisations and local variances will always occur.

I don't doubt the Wivenhoe Dam has done its job, but with all the dams upriver full there is nothing they can do but let water out in a controlled manner. Heaven help anyone downstream if the gates failed.