Saturday, January 05, 2008

What next? Fire? Famine?

First, there was this:




A tropical storm with golf-ball sized hailstones swept through Lismore in early October 2007. We were just about to leave the local shopping centre after doing groceries when it roared in like a train. That is the road the boys are looking at, 5 minutes after the storm hit.





Have a look at those rear windscreens...they're gone!
Driving through town afterwards was startling - everywhere, cars sported smashed front and rear windscreens and massive hail "dimpling", the streets were littered with leaves shredded from the trees by the force of the hailstones, houses had whole walls full of smashed windows and local landmarks like the old Post Office clock were badly damaged. Lismore was declared a natural disaster area, and millions of dollars of insurance claims were made.

Then, at the end of October, came this (as regular readers will remember, see here and here for story and more pictures):



(Image by Tim Hollis. I don't have an external shot, 'cos we were under it!)



Once again, our village as well as the Lismore region was declared a natural disaster zone (another hailstorm ripped through the whole area after our tornado), and we marvelled at Nature's power and destructive force.


And this morning, I wake to the first glimpse of sunshine since Christmas Day as this area has been subjected to days of torrential rain and gale-force winds (leaks in the house still not fixed since that tornado were sorely tested, and I have buckets and bowls in all sorts of unlikely places, and the four-poster bed in the middle of the room away from the worst of it), to see this:


(Image from ABC TV)

The Big Feller and the wee man are out looking at the extent of the flooding right now, but I grew up round here so have a pretty good idea what it's like out there. I hope the Big Feller might manage to take a half-decent photo so I can share it with you...his photograpic skills (cough, cough) are a little lacking.

Once again, Lismore is going to be declared a natural disaster zone. Even though the rain has eased at the moment, there is still so much water coming down from the mountains that source the local rivers...right where we used to live, actually.

So you can see why I am wondering what else the universe has in store for us at the moment? I don't want anything else to happen, and superstitiously wondered about the wisdom of choosing that post title.

Maybe the storm will be an internal one. Things are NOT good with me and the Big Feller. There are changes coming which may rip through our emotional landscapes with a force of a tornado.

7 comments:

♥.Trish.♥ Drumboys said...

Sorry to hear news of this current disaster in Lismore. Incredible after all the drought.
Also, the other emotional ones bearing down. I hope you come through unscathed and in one piece.

ruddygood said...

Thanks, love. I should point out that we are not directly affected by this one (ie. we're up on the high ground, so there is no river of water outside the front door), though we do have the potential to be cut off from the rest of the area. It was more the "what now...?" nature of things happening in this area.

Unscathed...I doubt. Undiminished...I intend to be.

Jenni said...

I didn't know tornadoes occur in Australia. I suppose I just never thought about it. We get quite a few in Kansas. This is such a strange place for weather and the saying goes that if you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes. Before living here, I thought I knew what hail was, but it turns out that was only sleet or freezing rain. One year we got softball sized hail before a tornado ripped through. Our van had huge dents all over it from that hail, and when we'd drive it to other parts of the country that don't have the sort of weird weather we have people would stop and stare in amazement. They never quite believed us when we told them the dents were from hail.

I popped over from the photography contest page and decided to bookmark your blog. It looks interesting and I love the photo in your header.

Anonymous said...

WOW Those photos tell a wild story!
We had flash flooding and storms in June, with damage. I hope we don't have to experience that again for a long time.

Hope that things look sunnier for you soon

Anonymous said...

Forgot to tell you that there is some bling on my blog for you!

JCK said...

I'm so sorry about all of this. Don't even LOOK at my recent posts about our BIG RAIN. Me MOST red faced NOW. Hope you are well otherwise.

Smiler said...

Gee, sorry I hadn't seen this before...

That was quite the storm eh? I had heard a bit about it. Guess the upside is there's no more drought... but that is a lot of damage.

As for the storm brewing on the homefront... I'd been meaning to come over and say something because I did figure from you comment about the smoking last week that things were extremely shaky. But then again, I wasn't sure if it was right for me to talk about it.

Hope everything is alright, cause I see you haven't posted anything since sunday.

In any case, my timing might not be the best because I was coming over here to tag you with an interesting meme. It's on today's post (13 things I expect...). Of course you don't have to do 13! 1 or 3 or 5 or whatever is fine!

My thoughts are with you. Hope all is well.

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