La Niña Strikes

Well, the Christmas rain appears to be here to stay. I can only count on one hand the number of days it hasn’t rained since then. Apparently, we have switched from El Niño to La Niña conditions, after about 10 years of drought and dryness in Australia. Now, as is typical here, it’s either feast or famine. (I still have trouble saying El Niño with a straight face and without conjuring up images of 1990s SNL skits, but I read about it so much now, the silliness is finally starting to fade.) No silliness here, for sure, because we are in flood mode in Queensland. Apparently areas the size of France and Germany together are now inundated with flood water. At least 10 people have died and many more are missing.

I thought being in the city would exclude me from the flood experience, but yesterday, it devastated a town only an hour’s drive from Brisbane City. Today, the Brisbane River, only a few blocks from my office building began to rise, now covering the walking/biking trails and parks along adjacent South Bank. Parts of the train and bus network began shutting down, due to new areas of the greater Brisbane area becoming flooded. People working downtown began leaving the city to get home before routes became impassable and by lunch time, we were told to go home and don’t come back until Monday!

Luckily our apartment building is on a hill, and we’re on the 12th floor, so I don’t think we have anything to worry about. As for ourselves, we’re mainly worried about all the businesses near us downtown shutting down and having enough food/water/electricity, etc. to get us through. This evening we scoped out the situation and the grocery stores (and a few pubs) were still open, but pretty much everything else had closed its doors in preparation for the worst. Fortunately, the grocery shelves hadn’t been raided too bad… only a few items were sold out.



So far, this is said to be the worst flood in over 100 years, when floods actually did affect downtown, so we’ll see what happens. Tomorrow, the Brisbane River is expected to peak. And there’s no dryness in the forecast in the foreseeable future, so Theo and I are just hanging tight and watching it all unfold. Unfortunately it’s going to be boring with even the movie theater shut down, so we’ll see!

(watching debris float down the Brisbane River:)