BG> Lyn just had a phone call from her ex-husband at Toowoomba, and
 BG> one of those fellows who got pissed, and tried riding their
 BG> home-made boat down a flooded creek at midnight, then promptly
 BG> disappeared (and presumably drowned) was a mate of his. Fucking
 BG> idiots, what did they expect? 

  The thought did occur to me... why the hell wsould they go boating
in a corrugated-iron canoe at midnight in a flooded creek? It's lucky
they didn't have an Arfmalite or they might has massacred Parliament.

 BG> Yeah, that small but deep low which formed off Caloundra (then
 BG> stayed there for 3 days) was responsible not only for the bulk
 BG> of the really torrential rain, but also the strongest winds
 BG> I've ever experienced here. Almost everybody in this area lost
 BG> trees or fences, and several homes were deroofed.

  It's an indredibly powerful engine, isn't it? It sucks up hot water
vapour from the ocean, cools it at 10,000 feet or something, and then
dumps god-only-knows how many tonnes of water back on the land. We had
4" of rain from Rockhampton to Sydney and 300 miles West... that's
2,000,000 x 200,000 x 0.1 = 40,000 million tonnes! If it drops that
from 3,000 metres, it's 1,200 trillion Joules! Even if it drops it
over 3 days (3 x 24 x 3600 seconds) it's still 4.6 gigawatts. Jesus!
And that doesn't even count the wind...

 BG> I suppose you've seen by now what it's done to the GC and SC
 BG> beaches (or what's left of them)? Bloody weather! 

  Yair... I saw an interesting TV program on that. Apparently, the
sand is taken from Broadbeach to Coolangatta, and dumped South past
Tweed Heads all the way to Pottsville. They do a deal with NSW to cart
it all back again... it's a nice little earner for the Tweed Shire 
Council.  

Regards,
Bob
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

---