Saturday, April 4, 2009

Land of contrasts

It has been an interesting summer here in Melbourne.  We spent most of the summer trying to keep out of the oven hot temperatures with the hair dryer winds, including three consecutive days in the mid 40s (that's around 110F) with high winds.  In the months of January and February we received only a few mm of rain in Melbourne (normal is about 80-90mm for that period).  At the start of February there was a further windy 40+ day followed by a windy cool change that resulted in the deadliest and most destructive forest fires in Australia's history.

While the drought that started before I moved to Australia 8 years ago wares on, the town of Innisfail, in Queensland, was submerged under flood waters.  Between January 25 and February 25 the tropical town received more rain than Melbourne has for the past four years!  And this week Coffs Harbour, on the North coast of New South Wales, was inundated when some areas near the town received almost 450mm in 24 hours.  Just in case you can't process mms, that's about 1.5 ft of water!  I can't even fathom that much water falling from the sky in such a short period of time.

Finally, to keep us on our toes, we've felt two earthquakes in Melbourne in the past month.

Autumn has come, however, bringing cooler and wetter weather.  The drought is still here, but we've finally had a few good rainfalls, and those fires that were set in February have been contained.  Despite all the sensational news (I mean that in a bad way), we are doing well, as are our friends and family.

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