Storms and Floods

Anne — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:23:06 +0000

We have had very stormy weather over the last few days and as I mentioned in my last post there has been loads of rain. We have also been having very high tides which is normal for this time of year, but they do seem to be getting higher every year which is a bit worrying as we live right next to the beach. On Friday afternoon I went down to the beach hoping to have a walk, but the tide was too high and it was also looking very stormy so I gave up the idea.

stormy afternoon

We were invited out to dinner with friends later in the evening and as we left home the rain was starting again and continued on and off, very heavy at times for the rest of the evening. We started to realize how bad it was when we reached the roundabout near our friends’ house and saw an abandoned car. The level of water on the roundabout was so high that the person hadn’t seen the drain in the centre and driven straight into it. We then drove onto the coastal road and there the flooding was really bad from a combination of the heavy rain and an extremely high tide. We have never seen it as bad as that before, the drains and verges on both sides of the road were completely submerged, so we had to crawl along very carefully. There were a number of abandoned cars along the road but luckily we were in a four wheel drive and going very cautiously, even so we felt that it was touch and go in some places.

the local hotel and supermarket car park under water.

I took the photo above with the camera on my phone so it’s not that good quality but gives an idea of what it was like. When we reached the road going to our house which is just off the main road I really thought we wouldn’t get through as that floods just with normal rainfall. We got through, fearing the worst for our house, but our house must be on slightly higher ground because when we got to the gate there were only a few inches of water and the area where we park the cars was quite dry so nothing had come into the house. It appears that the water had come through there though because the door mat had been washed away and all our shoes which we normally leave outside the door were nowhere to be seen. We went inside and grabbed a torch and then hunted round the garden for our shoes. We found them washed up in a corner and luckily none of them had been washed down the drain and out to see never to be seen again.

some of our shoes

I wanted to take some photos so we went in and got changed and I grabbed my waterproof camera. We went down to the beach where the sound of the waves was just a constant roar. The tide had already started to go back so the flood water was also starting to recede as it poured down the storm drains. The path to the beach was still very deep in water and our whole road was quite flooded, several of the houses had had water going in too.

Next morning there was no sign of the flooding apart from the rubbish and debris which had been washed all over the place. I went to look at the beach and a huge channel had been goudged out by the water flowing from the outfall.

knee deep in water, the path to the beach

our simpang (road) under water

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Storms and Floods