Victoria: Troughy thundery humid rain event. Jan 9th -14th

[James]

hmm my partner wants to go from melbourne to benalla tommorow, is it possible or is there too much flooding?? - is there a website you can check out that tells you

[Meso]

This is your best bet James - http://mobiletraffic.vicroads.vic.gov.a ... p=HPE00019" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Think Melb to Benalla should be ok, but I haven't gone through all of them.

[Lily]

As Meso has said, Vicroads is the best place. Here's the link to the list of flood closures updated about an hour ago, I'll copy and paste it into the warnings thread too http://mobiletraffic.vicroads.vic.gov.a ... p=HPE00019

Still feeling quite humid up here this morning, much cooler, but the air is still quite heavy with moisture. My husband checked the gauge last night at home before coming up here, 41.4mm since midnight through to around 6pm last night in Lysterfield.

[Lily]

From ABC http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011 ... =melbourne

Tense wait for Victorian flood peaks
Updated January 15, 2011 07:14:00
Slideshow: Photo 1 of 2

Floods leave Vic towns under water (7pm TV News VIC)
Dozens of towns in western and central Victoria, including the city of Horsham, are bracing for damaging flood peaks today.
Towns along the Wimmera, Loddon, Avoca and Campaspe River systems have spent a sleepless night waiting for river levels to reach their peak.
Other towns downstream have been warned they will face flooding next week.
Many of the towns in danger were flooded in September.
Emergency evacuation warnings were issued for Charlton, Durham Ox and Bridgewater overnight.
Rochester is also expected to face significant flooding today.
About 8,000 homes around Bendigo, including St Arnaud, Charlton, Wycheproof and Boort are without power after a substation was flooded.
Hundreds of residents in Serpentine were ordered to leave their homes at first light this morning, and are being moved to safety.
Yesterday, Charlton in central Victoria was hardest hit.
About 400 homes flooded and most of the town's residents evacuated.
Two hundred homes were inundated in Carisbrook, where the town's entire population of about 800 were evacuated, and 100 homes were flooded in Creswick.
Almost 2,000 people were forced out of their homes to stay with friends or at evacuation centres set up across the region.
The city of Horsham is among the towns expected to bear the brunt of flood peaks today.
Lachlan Quick from the State Emergency Service (SES) says it is not clear how much of Horsham will be affected.
"We would expect some form of impact in Horsham along the Wimmera River," he said.
"We'd also expect impact on Bridgewater, Serpentine, Durham Ox and Kerang on the Loddon River.
"We do know that the river heights are rising and making their way downstream to other townships."
Horsham's Mayor, Michael Ryan says the town is preparing for the flooding to be worse than September.
"The flooding impact of that will certainly be on housing," he said.
"Back in September there was none, so this is going to be a significant change to what happened back in September, which of itself was significant enough."
The SES has responded to more than 5,000 calls for help in the past three days.
Sleepless night

Hundreds of people have spent the night at evacuation centres across western and central Victoria.
John from Rochester slept at the town's sports ground.
"It's been a pretty sleepless night," he said.
"The water's come up overnight so we're stranded here, no food, no water, no nothing. It's not a happy situation unfortunately.
"We knew it was coming but unfortunately it looks like it's going to be the highest it's ever been here."
Several SES crews are trapped at Charlton after helping residents evacuate.
The floodwaters have now cut all access to the town, and the crews spent the night in the town hall.
Melbourne flooding

Some areas of Melbourne's west are also flooded.
The Maribyrnong River has breached its banks near the Anglers Tavern at Maribyrnong and at Chiefley Street.
A ute was swept off Sinclairs Road at Rockbank around 7:00pm (AEST) last night.
The road was closed when Kororoit Creek rose, but the 43-year-old driver ignored the road sign.
The driver swam to safety.
A CFA crew also rescued three husky puppies from the vehicle.

[nafets]

Driving up to Yarrawonga today, should the road be ok?

[Lily]

Carisbrook's looking really bad Video and news story from Ninemsn http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/flo ... floods-hit

The central Victorian town of Carisbrook is deserted and almost submerged as heavy rains flood communities across the state.

After days of deluge, the nearby reservoir couldn't hold any more water and the town of around 1000 people was inundated on Friday.

"We have a town that is totally, totally covered in water," local Country Fire Authority (CFA) volunteer Philip Leech told AAP.

"Every house in the centre of town is under about four or five feet of water. Everybody is out of town, apart from a few in double storey places who have stayed."

Mr Leech and three CFA colleagues have been on their truck on the bridge over Deep Creek on the Pyrenees Highway outside of town since Thursday morning, turning people away.

He says the normally tranquil 10-metre wide creek is now running "very swiftly" and is about 500m wide.

"It's just massive, it's the highest I've ever seen it," he said.

Most Carisbrook residents have evacuated to the emergency centre in Maryborough to the west.

Attempts at establishing an emergency centre in Carisbrook were abandoned as water cascaded through the town.

Mr Leech said residents had enough warning during the week to leave town, but many left it to the last minute.

"There's been a bit of a build up, we've had the rain all week and the reservoir has been spilling over the last couple of days and it's just got too much for it to handle," he said.

"People have been drifting out, but there was a bit of a mad rush at the end. It took a bit of effort to get everyone out.

"There's similar stories everywhere around here, everyone's got a bit of drama ... people are getting stranded."

Deep Creek joins McCallum Creek at Carisbrook and eventually runs into the swollen Loddon River which has a major flood warning.

Houses in Beaufort, around 65km south of Carisbrook, have also been inundated and hundreds of properties have been evacuated.

Just under 2000 people have evacuated their homes since late Thursday, particularly in western and central Victoria, the State Emergency Service (SES) says.

Evacuation warnings had also been issued for Bridgewater, Newbridge, Dadswell Bridge, Halls Gap, Great Western, Charlton and Glenorchy.

[windyrob]

Well I scored 84mm all up so not to shabby! Still no idea if I'm starting up at great western on monday.

As to off topic global warming talk then ROFL DJ, 2010 was a strong (not super) el nino year and was statistically insignificant to 1998, so the world only warmed slightly since then. Meanwhile the world continues to warm at the same pace as it has for the last 300 years (the 1ky cycle seen in ice cores) combined with the effect of the 60 year PDO cycle. The rates of warming seen are far to low compared to the IPCC computer models which rely on an unsubstantiated (made up) aerosol cooling of 1deg C to account for the warming being 1 deg instead of the expected 2deg! It is pretty obvious that most of the warming in the last 30 years was caused by decreases in cloud cover http://robjmitchell.smugmug.com/Weather ... CaqU-M.jpg, which is why can't understand how you refuse to consider natural forces as the cause of the warming! 2011 will be interesting as a large lag between ENSO SST's and satellite temps is usually associated in big movements in the overall temperature.

Meanwhile with all the murray darling catchments primed or in flood, the immediate future is pretty scary, especially considering that a mega flood in the early 1700s was estimated to be 4 times the the 1954 floods (based on black box seed germinating on flood margins)

[Anthony Violi]

Sorry David, you are just going to have to accept that the record humidity was advected down from the NT, simply because it felt like it.

All the predictions of permanent drought by the BOM and CSIRO and lots of other people like Tim Flannery are now looking like a foolish and disgraceful prediction. And that has cost lives as no one has been prepared due to this advice.

There will be much more discussion on this, we will set up a designated thread, in the meantime, climatology is the place.

[Lily]

Evacuation warning for Rochester this morning, and earlier Serpentine http://www.ses.vic.gov.au/CA256AEA002F0 ... n~&2=~&3=~

[Anthony Violi]

Hopefully Rhino is ok, has anyone heard from him? Everyone stay safe.

[Lily]

No, haven't heard anything from him as yet, I think Wes is trying to get in touch to see what, if anything, we might be able to do to help him. Hope you're ok Rhino.

[schitzengiggles]

It shouldn't be too hard to find Rhino.
First, find his IP address, this software should log it, then paste it into http://legacy.zoneedit.com/whois.html
Then call the ISP, ask for customer service, ask to speak to a supervisor immediately and explain the circumstances to the supervisor.
They won't be able to give you any extended contact details, but if you're wiley, you ask nicely and they're any sort of decent human being they'll attempt to contact him on the spot.

[schitzengiggles]

If it turns out he's on Telstra, shoot me a PM with his IP address and I'll get his details to you on Monday.

[Anthony Violi]

Still humid today, I would not be at all surprised to see some activity form on the seabreeze convergence line across the ranges.

[gerta]

Avoca river peaked 0.75M above the September flood which inundated the town. There is the potential for smaller rises today, but hopefully the worse has passed.

[Monbulkian]

Hope Rhino and any others who were affected by the floods are ok.

We finished the event with 83.5mm and our MTD is 86mm.

Wonder what the weather is going to bring us next?

[Madmel]

Anyone who is affected by the Vic floods, hope you guys are staying safe, even though the event is not as economically catastrophic as QLD but it does bring it close to home of how shattering it has been to communities.

Glad to see the sunshine and the feeling of less humid weather! It was kinda uncomfortable for the last leg of it. Scored a total of about 57mm out of all the rain. Frogs have been going nuts and feels like I was in Qld trying to not step on the froggies as I walked to my car LOL. Backyard is a swamp atm and dreading the mozzies that are yet to come out since they are thriving larvae atm in the puddles of water

[norfolk]

Finally we can dry up! I would rather weeks of THIS kind of weather than what we have just gone through! One thing I noticed yesterday was all the dragonflies everywhere! Swarming all over the place. I don't think I have seen this many dragonflies about for a very very long time!

[Jake Smethurst]

Beautiful sunshine here today allowing for some things to dry up a little, however still very, very wet!! Still quite humid too with DP readings here at 19 degrees and the current temperature at 23 degrees.

In the longer term, I agree with Anthony, I can see something looming, but I can also see potential hot weather too!!

[Anthony Violi]

Quite right Jake, there will be enormous heat due to the dry out over the interior, question is whether or not it moves South or gets held up through the interior.