Australia: the Sequel: Queensland floods

Well, I'm sure many of you have heard about the horrendous bush fires that devoured large parts of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales. While there have been bush fires in Queensland they were not as severe as elsewhere and, from what we understand, they typically aren't.

However, as many of you are seeing on the telly this past weekend, Cyclone Oswald and an associated monsoon trough passed over parts of Queensland and recently moved on to New South Wales.

Over a number of days, there was widespread damage from the impact of severe storms, high seas, flooding, heavy rainfall and tornadoes. Even in this dry continent, the Queensland Premier ordered the preemptive release of water from Wivenhoe and North Pine Dams to increase the dams' flood capacity. At the time of writing, here are some facts:

Rainfall peaked in Tully where approximately 39 inches of rain fell, with 24.9 inches falling over 48 hours.
The town of Ingham was completely cut off due to high waters. Residents in the town were advised to stock up on emergency supplies as the Herbert River rose rapidly after 7.9 inches of rain fell in the town in just three hours
A brief tornado or waterspout with winds of 87 mph touched down near Hay Point.
Three separate tornados tore through the Bundaberg Region.The first tornado struck the town of Bargara, which brought down power lines, tore off roofs and smashed windows. The town of Burnett Heads was battered by a second tornado, and soon after a third tornado struck Coonarr. The tornadoes injured at least 17 people and damaged 150 properties. The Burnett River reached a new recorded height of 31.3 feet. 130 patients were evacuated from the Bundaberg Hospital to hospitals in Brisbane.
The floods have claimed the lives of four people, including a three-year-old boy who died after being crushed by a falling tree.
At Gympie, flood waters from the Mary River swamped around 100 business and 25 residents.
In Maryborough, about 50 businesses and 150 homes were inundated as waters from the Mary River rose.
Unlike the flooding which occurred in January 2011 at Ipswich and Brisbane, the flooding there was caused by the natural flooding of the creek system rather than deliberate dam releases.
Waters in the Lockyer Valley reached an all time high with the main street in the town inundated.
In Logan City, the Logan River reached a peak with flood waters slow to recede along the river.
Brisbane's main water treatment plant was shut down because of high levels of sediment and silt in the Brisbane River, which resulted in residents being asked to conserve water -"to only use it for "drinking, cooking and bathing". Water supplies in some suburbs of Brisbane are expected to run out soon. I'm sure things will change over the next few days.

What about us you ask? Not to worry mate, all is fine here. Yes, we received a lot of rain and strong winds but our community is fairly well sheltered by islands on the east coast from the destruction you see elsewhere. We only were housebound for one day. Cleveland isn't near any major creeks, rivers or tributaries where most of the flooding occurred. Our yard has no gum trees to drop branches or fall over (they are actually fairly dangerous trees - they like to drop bits and pieces anywhere, any time). We spent the wet weekend working on school stuff, getting the classroom organized and watching the weather on the news - there was nothing else on! We even went out and drove around town a bit to see the damage and went for a beach walk at Wellington Point.