Sure there was lots of rain, but there was probably similar
quantity and timespan back when we were putting the cement pylons down for the
pergola. Really - it rained for about a month non-stop, and heavy most of the way through. What we didn’t have was
people dumping out from the dam at the same time.
Just a quick preface: There are some mud-maps at the end of the article to aid locational context.
On Saturday we’d been out visiting people and on the drive
home swung by for a look at the sports fields. There was water onto the middle field
(bottom field, middle field, canteen and carpark). In the previous flood (per paragraph 1) it got
to the middle field and stopped.
Ok, so that’s still quite a lot but it took the last couple of weeks to reach that height. Fine.
I drove by the following day at around 4pm and the water was
up to the top of the carpark. That’s new.
And the dirt road out to some properties was over and the adjacent fields. hmmm...
I walked back and had an in-person look. This was a panorama shot more-or-less from the canteen/carpark.
there are some stairs that go down to the fields. See that orange arrow - that just the top top of some chainlink fence behind some goal posts, probably 2 storeys tall including the roof. So that's quite some volume that filled up in about >12 hours.
The rain wasn't done though - I'll skip ahead a bit but on Sunday night I had a dream that I was walking down our street and there was water coming up from the Eastern end.
That morning early I went for a wander and discovered that yep, the water was now at the end of our street, though not as far as in my dream. I think these two pics were Monday morning (maybe tuesday).
These are the fields along the border road of the suburb, parallel to my street. The sports fields are to the left of the shot.
Same again. Water weed from a small dam/creek somewhere in there. Covered the border road and some ended up floating into my street too. Very glad it didn't clog up the drains.
Sunday near midnight we got warnings from SES to prepare to evacuate our specific suburb. This here is the power box for our sector of the suburb. On Monday morning around 10am the power went off - the company had switched it off deliberately. Although the box itself is some way back from the waters there were power poles right in the flooded area and the risk of electrifying the water was obviously significant.
Again I'll skip forward a bit. Monday and Tuesday passed and there was no real sign of getting any power. From memory on Tuesday it actually stopped raining in the afternoon. Rumours were passing that it could Saturday before we got power back so I went for a drive to pick up a generator from a friend. Quite a drive - some detours, drove over the Nepean River into the blue mountains, the river was definitely up, but generally confined to the banks.
The overpass bridge had a newly formed lake in all directions. Normally this is stock fields.
Skip forward, the rain had been and gone and the weather was actually quite nice. However the water level continued to rise due to run off from other areas, and tidal effects.
This is the highest it got to, which was Wednesday around 10am. This is about halfway up the street. The road has quite a convex ridge along the centre so it can be a bit deceptive how far the water is up. Fortunately I don't think any houses were actually reached, though a few front yards will be quite soggy for a while.
The electricity co truck arrived just as I was about to leave for the generator so I managed to get some info, bottom line; 'probably unlikely to put it back on. go get the generator.'
This is the cul-de-sac about halfway up the road. The previous day there were pools on each side of the road that didn't actually touch, the following day it had accumulated quite a bit. The power box is on the left side where the power pole is (red/brown fence).
Just looking down the street again.
This morning we went for walkies nice and early. The water had receded back by about 2/3 and the cross road was actually visible. Back to being an annoying pond. The cul-de-sac was also entirely clear.
This is looking at the final pond from the other side, we walked around a connecting road.
Same spot but further left, looking out to the fields. The sports fields are to the left at the end of the street (just past the last houses).
Around 11am I had a look down the street and the road was clear through.
At 1:55pm the power went back on.
To their credit the electricity co were pretty on the ball with getting us back on line and their inspections. Can't fault their decisions or their handling of the situation.
At it's highest I saw someone walking through the water in our street and it was about knee/mid-thigh height perhaps. Once the rain stopped people were kayaking on it and in the street it was fairly safe. Some kayakers also went out onto the farm fields and where the sports field was, which would probably be a bit more dangerous - especially the sports fields as it's so deep, plus all kinds of chaotic currents I'd guess.
This here shows the local area. The sports fields are the green lines, light green - lower field, darker green - middle field. The darker blue lines are the nearby parts of the farm fields (the water extended beyond that too). The red 'X' shows the position of the power box.
The medium blue lines along the streets show the position of the water around monday-tuesday. The light blue extensions show the highest reach tuesday-wednesday. Wasn't that long really in hind sight but feel like a lot longer - only 5 days, but felt like 10. The orange dashes was our exit route if we decided to leave and the pink dashes was a cheeky alternative across a small reserve (hoping not to get bogged).
And that was that. Far tamer than many other people's experiences but quite worrying, distracting and annoying non-the-less. We're obviously grateful that we and the suburb in general didn't go under. As one neighbour suggested it's actually a selling point that even with a 1:100 year flood we're still not getting cut off.
I estimate that it would take double that effort to come close to cutting off the entire street. and double that again to start reaching all of the houses in the street (and that's just coming up to the front door, not covering entire residences).
So, that's that. Could have done without it, but I learned a few things, and chatted a bit more with neighbours, so some positives I guess.
Update 2021-03-26
Time just loses it's flow at the moment. about 24 hours since the power came on, but feels like 4-5 days.
Went for walkies down to the sports fields. The main border road is clear and clean, not sure if they sprayed it down or something but it's back to normal, just detritus in the barded wire fence along it. cows back in those fields too.
The sports field still has a sizeable quantity of water in it. You can see the top of the goal posts on the middle field, so mental comparisons for when it's gone entirely. the water came up to (and including) the 10th brick of the canteen at pretty much the highest point in that area - visible water line below that.
Until (hopefully a far less soggy) next time...
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