Watch out for rising water

johnboy said :

because we’re willing to pay more for the water to do it than a cotton farmer?

Exactly. What value a litre of water? Surely I should be able to water my tomatoes in Canberra, then eat them here, rather then go without, so that the water can be used to grow oranges a thousand km’s away….

How come they don’t grow rice in FNQ where it rains 5 metres a year. The Asians seem to be able to grow it in their monsoon addled countries.
Why does the Aussie rice grower plant his crop in a region (inland NSW) which would be a dust bowl if left to its own devices..?

Flooding? Surely not……maybe Captain RAAF was right a few weeks ago when he predicted all this?

tamd said :

Well, where are all the people who used to write to the Canberra Times saying it would never rain again so we had better drink recycled shit?

It’s been raining bucketloads and confirms what we need is enough storage to catch it and spread it out over a 7-10 year drought period. Even Maxine Cooper admitted that average rainfall was not the problem, it was the variability and need to have more storage to tide us through drought periods.

See also Future Water Options Review, Water Security Program July 2007 (ACTEW has, it seems, removed these earlier reports from its website … why, one asks? because they show how stupid all this water shortage hysteria is and how the problem is man-made?)

We do NOT need water restrictions – we need dams which are adequate and not being emptied all the time to make Australian rivers (which do, and should, run dry) permanent safe havens for Europoean carp.

Hence the Cotter Dam expansion, which will increase the amount of water that can be held in the Cotter dam by something like 600% (not sure of the exact amount but it’s massive)

That being said, Australia is the driest inhabitated continent on Earth. Our government has just released a proposal for the Murray Darling basin which will see water allocations to farmers cut by a massive amount.

Why should we city-folks get to have half hour showers simply because we want to?

Well, where are all the people who used to write to the Canberra Times saying it would never rain again so we had better drink recycled shit?

It’s been raining bucketloads and confirms what we need is enough storage to catch it and spread it out over a 7-10 year drought period. Even Maxine Cooper admitted that average rainfall was not the problem, it was the variability and need to have more storage to tide us through drought periods.

See also Future Water Options Review, Water Security Program July 2007 (ACTEW has, it seems, removed these earlier reports from its website … why, one asks? because they show how stupid all this water shortage hysteria is and how the problem is man-made?)

We do NOT need water restrictions – we need dams which are adequate and not being emptied all the time to make Australian rivers (which do, and should, run dry) permanent safe havens for Europoean carp.

The BoM forecast for Canberra (5.50pm Thursday 14th) at;
http://reg.bom.gov.au/act/forecasts/canberra.shtml
ACT Forecast

Issued at 4:24 pm EDT on Thursday 14 October 2010
for the period until midnight EDT Thursday 21 October 2010.
Warning Summary at issue time

Severe weather warning for damaging winds and flash flooding for the Australian Capital Territory forecast district.

Details of warnings are available on the Bureau’s website http://www.bom.gov.au, by telephone 1300-659-218 or through some TV and radio broadcasts.
Forecast for the rest of Thursday

Partly cloudy. Winds north to northwesterly averaging 10 to 20 km/h.
City Centre
Partly cloudy.
Chance of any rainfall:
5%
Chance of no rainfall:
95%
Forecast for Friday

Cloudy. Heavy rain developing around dawn, easing to scattered showers by early evening. Scattered snow showers about the ranges late in the evening. The chance of thunderstorms until late afternoon. Winds northerly averaging up to 55 km/h, increasing to 60 km/h ahead of a west to northwesterly change 35 to 50 km/h during the afternoon.
City Centre
Rain. Windy.
Min
11
Max
17
Chance of any rainfall:
90%
Chance of no rainfall:
10%
Rainfall:
45 to 80 mm

Sounds like rain in early morning.
A check of rain radar shows a big band of rain from Alice to Adelaide heading east – as they do.
We must remember – we are still in a drought – any rain is simply anomalous.

I noticed that the river was pretty high at Coppin’s Crossing on the way to work this morning. Is it really gonna rain more tonight? Looks nice out the window now.

Ode to Joy………………….and they never, ever get it wrong, do they?

Still, I have some spare wood in the backyard so I’ll drag out my dusty old plans for an Arc ………………just in case!!