Soooo much rain :)

Satellite image of Cyclone Charlotte (12 Jan 09)

Well the first cyclone of the year for our region and what a dumping of rain! Cyclone Charlotte crossed the coast of Cape York Peninsula this morning at the mouth of the Gilbert River as a category 1 cyclone which is strong enough to be a pest but not strong enough to do a lot of damage.

The cyclone quickly deteriorated into a rain depression and what a rainy depression it has been! Cairns received over 300mm before 9am this morning (that's a foot of rain if you measure things in the old scale) and then another 250mm since (its 9pm now). I took these photos of the rain overwhelming the guttering at our house this morning.

the pool nearly overflows as the rain pours in faster than the overflow pipe can remove the excess water.

Lucky for us our house is built on the foothills of Mount Whitfield so the water drained away quickly and efficiently. However that does mean that the water had to find somewhere to flow to and unfortunately for us that place was between our house and our office!!!

Anderson Street, Manunda (the Subaru handled the water levels)

It took 45 minutes to travel the 4km from the house to the office - perhaps this method would have been quicker.
(Brown Street, Westcourt)

never mind, the weather was great for some!

(ducks on the bank of the Barron River)

Tomorrow is likely to be just as wet and uncomfortable so its off with the good shoes and on with thongs and bare feet for work - typical Queensland.