Fire Watch 20 Feb 2020

The news - the bits of it that weren’t about the coronavirus - is telling us that the storms this season are going to be severe. Parts of this map that are on fire are also flooded. It’s just getting worse over here.

Please vote for the environmentalists who have policies that will firkin work.

Fire Watch 10 Feb 2020.

Queensland is no longer on fire! Meanwhile, Sydney is somehow dangerously flooded and on fire. I’ve provided a screenie of a map from news (dot) com (dot) au to prove it [source]. They’re telling people not to go to work, they’re making noises like Sydney should be evacuated… it has to be scary beans down there for sure.

Warwick, in Queensland, has had two years’ worth of rainfall in two days. Also scary beans. Dams are overflowing, rivers are flooding, and there is just too much water everywhere.

…not a peep about it from the folks allegedly in charge. Especially since everyone and their kid brother’s dog knows that all this is due to climate change now.

On the recent floods

First: Damnit, America! Do something about this climate change before it gets irrevocable on all our arses!

Right. That’s off my chest.

There is little crueler in Australian weather than flooding rain that follows a drought. Any attempt to avert incipient disaster by letting some water out of the dams is greeted with immense hue and cry. Because we’re not sure we’re ever going to get water again.

Then everything gets effed up because the water’s still coming and the dam has to let something go or the whole thing will bust and that would make it even worse for the poor sods downstream.

That’s what went wrong in 2011.

Now it’s happening again in 2013, everyone seems to have forgotten how rivers work [CLUE: water upstream == water downstream, later] and are blaming the dams for all the water. This in the face of all evidence that the dams are actually waiting for a good time to let loose some excess water this time around.

The reason why we’re having trouble now is there’s a FUCKING EX-CYLCONE OFF THE COAST. It’s dropping-down shit-tons of water, and most of it wasn’t turning up on the radar because it was going sideways. People have forgotten, during the short span between 2011 and 2013, what cyclonic storms are like.

And this one’s especially long-lived. Owing to climate change.

Thanks a bunch, America. Just get rid of the dickhead climate deniers and get off your collective arse and do something constructive for a change. Or, I dunno, subsidise environmental responsibility instead of the usual corporate douchebaggery.

But I digress.

There’s a fair chance that all this rain might just hit all the bushfires in Victoria. The one place that’ll be glad to see it coming. One plus side to that, at least.

I just wish they’d stop calling them once-in-[insert number of decades] storms, because they seem to be turning up every couple of years.

And I really want a “meanwhile in Australia” animated gif of the car in this: