It's been scorching hot here in Canberra but this afternoon storm clouds burst quite dramatically. SIL1 was out shopping, on his way home, when he said he drove into what seemed like a wall of water. One minute the road was dry, next minute he had the wipers on full. But the gutters were more interesting, he said - they were flowing fast, but with the cloudburst escalating, suddenly there was a torrent flowing along, he said he could see the wave surging in the gutter from the sudden extra flow. Nothing on the Toowoomba scale, but after having seen that footage, it was eerily familiar on a smaller scale.
What happened in Towoomba was the same, but on a larger scale - excess water flow from multiple sources (several creeks run into one) suddenly became a flood surge.
We talk about flash floods in Australia, my parents used to talk about them. Never camp in a dry creek bed, they said, because if the river is in flood upstream you might not know until too late, it can come down as a wall of water. It can rain upstream but not where you are, so there's no clue sometimes.
Over 20 have died in Lockyer Valley (the Toowoomba flood). Nine people are still missing but remains have been found, possibly human (that worries me - how mangled must the body be, for them to not be sure?) which, if human, will bring the death toll up by one more. But it will probably require DNA to work out who it is.
Of the 9 missing, they're not expecting to find any of them now except by pure luck.
Marg