Après moi, le déluge

The monsoon trough dipped south again early this morning, & dumped over 160 millimetres of rain — about 6 inches — in around two hours. We’ve spent the time since then mopping up downstairs, dumping a couple of mats, putting things out to dry, There was just too much water for the drains to cope, so some of it snuck in under the doors & probably came up through the floor in some parts. It’s a bit hard to exactly plot its path. It’s hasn’t flooded downstairs, more just made its presence felt.

The river had peaked yesterday afternoon at 7.75 metres in the current flood, the second in 17 days — the major one before that was 17 years ago — but this morning’s downpour pushed it up over eight metres, & water is again flowing, not into, but through the lagoon at the bottom of the street. It’s now a quite large lake, many kilometres long & about a kilometre wide, following a past bed of the Fitzroy River, which has changed to its current course over the millenia.

& there’s a much-used-of-late word that I hope never to hear again. Inundate. As in:

major arterial roads including Gladstone Road and Musgrave Street had been either cut or inundated with water.

Flash flooding has inundated parts of of central Queensland., including the Rockhampton region in the last 24-hours.

Residents in the central Queensland town of Rockhampton have been inundated by floodwaters for the second time in a month.

Up to one metre of water inundated homes this morning and local roads in low-lying areas were cut off

Time for an updated thesaurus, news people. There are other words.....