Quote:
Originally Posted by hotspur
The QLD premier said "this is a freak of nature",that about sums it up.
Chris
|
Well ... yes and no. Rain of this intensity is certainly natural but not as 'freaky' (uncommon) as you might think. It is really hard to get good information on small, brief, high intensity rainfall events and so they tend to be underestimated in the weather statistics. The other thing is that while the rainfall is natural the effect isn't natural. We have cleared agricultural land and covered cities with hard, non-absorbing surfaces. Both of these changes increase the size of flash floods. I've been caught in storms that had water flowing 30cm deep down the road in farm country and yet 2km away in a national park the creek hadn't even started to flow. The vegetation and leaf litter held the water back and so it had time to seep into the soil. The difference between natural landscapes and cities is even more dramatic. Even small storms will start water flowing down streets when natural landscapes will have no run-off.
There will be a few people blaiming all this on global warming - which is only a very minor culprit at the best (I think not a culprit at all but I could be wrong) - and yet remain oblivious to the much larger contribution our alteration of the landscape plays in exaserbating these natural events.