Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Drought breaking rains for NSW

The storms across NSW last week were spectacular to say the least.
With Bermagui getting around 200mm in 24 hours, it wasn't the heaviest of the falls.
It was enough though to free blocked estuary systems to the ocean and flush them out.

The following video is of the storm on Fri morning 05.02.10 around 5am, with footage of a few kangaroos playing in the rain and the Cuttagee system breaking to the ocean later that day.




The baragoot system broke on its own that night, with Wallaga lake needing a large excavator to help it along the next day as water levels rose nearly 2 meters.
Local council took the initiative to see all lake and river systems in need got a digging out at the entry point to the ocean as massive rainfall fueled the flows in areas stagnant from drought.
This is how things looked across NSW at around 7am Friday 05.02.10 thanks to the BOM sat image.



Following the rain, with a little help, Wallaga Lake was on the run.



This was Baragoot,


..and Cuttagee.



All areas did well from the rain, allowing clearing of the stagnant waters and facilitating movement of marine creatures to and from the ocean and these estuary systems.
Hopefully the prawning will be better next year. :)

1 comment:

  1. Hi David
    Great report.
    Our rain was just steady, heavy rain, not thunder-storm rain. Ours fell mostly on Thursday.
    Great to see your local lakes open.
    At 1:30sec on the video, there is a fish jumping. Presumably out of its tiny mind, not ever having seen such flows before.
    I hope that Tuross Lake has opened. They got some huge falls in the back end of their Catchment there too.

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