Well it wasn't cyclone Ellie......

Thursday, February 5, 2009

.......but almost!!



Temperatures around here have been sweltering. This is going down in the history books as a hot, hot summer. With temperatures hitting above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) with regularity, the hot summer sun is turning everything crisp (even yourself if you dare to venture out between 10 am & 4pm!!) Not surprisingly Monday was another sweltering day - although with more humidity than we are used to. Sure enough about 6pm we began to hear thunder far off in the distance & we began to hope for some rain. However the combination of lightening & crisp, dry ground could only lead to one thing...



"Fire" - the call came over the UHF radio. Our neighbour was going to help fight it, but asked Dave to be on the alert as he was worried that it would move quickly towards his place (fires can travel tens of thousands of acres in minutes in these conditions). Dave decided to venture off & fill up our watering tank we have on the trailer... just in case.


(There is a fence somewhere under there!)

About 10 minutes later, without more than a few seconds warning it came... the wildest storm I have ever seen in my life. Tree limbs were flying as if flung by some unseen hand. Trees were uprooted & thrown down crushing everything in their path. And the rain....the beautiful, wonderful rain was crashing down so hard, the driveway became an instant river channelling water as quickly as it could. Rain, wind, hail..... meanwhile Dave was somewhere out in it filling the water tank from a dam....I couldn't reach him on the radio & all we could do was hope & pray all was right.

Ellie, meanwhile had given up hope. "Daddy's dead." she said with a shake of her head & a matter-of-factness I would expect as if she had just pronounced that one of our baby chicks hadn't made it. " My daddy's dead"!
"But at least he's gone to heaven, because he was a christian" pipped in Zai. Meanwhile I didn't know to laugh at their dire predictions... or cry.



After 20 mins of this the storm passed & daddy came home.... to much rejoicing!!! (He had been stuck in the car in the middle of the paddock while the storm raged.) - And what a story to tell about our pessimistic children!!


After a night without power, we spent the next day removing tree limbs from our boundary fence.... oh & getting bogged in the mud (oops.... that was me!!) It was fun doing the work together... & getting really muddy... & cooling down in the newly filled dam!!!

And the best thing of all....17 mls of rain!!!


(For international readers, cyclone Ellie is the cyclone that crossed the northern coast of Australia a day or so earlier! - I didn't make up the name!)

11 comments:

Mum-me said...

Wow! How great that you got some rain - but what a terrifying way to get it!!

Glad everyone was okay, despite the depressing predictions of your children.

Anonymous said...

Oh my word! What a storm!

It is good that you got some rain, but unfortunate that you had to go through all of that to get it!

I hope the kids aren't too traumatized. We had a bout of tornadoes in this area last summer, and Bee didn't sleep well for months. She was too paranoid that the warning sirens would go off in the middle of the night.

Mummy McTavish said...

So glad to hear you got some rain! I hope your channeling system got as much collected as possible.

Not really sure what to think about Ellie and Zai's conversation. I was laughing so much I was crying, sorry. How did dave feel about their pessimistic outlook on HIS life?

(I'd probably get the car bogged too)

Carrie said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog...your pictures are craziness, I would have been found in my closet shaking. I hate bad storms. I'm used to the hot temps, I live in South Texas therefore during the summer we have weeks were the temp are 100+. Take care and talk to you soon...

--Carrie

Anonymous said...

Hey Narn,
Glad you are all alright!! The twins look so cute in that photo, they are real farmers now.
luv
sel

Grannysaurus said...

Don't you just love kids?
Are you sure your storm wasn't a mini-tornado. I've been caught a couple of times by them and that is just how I would have described them, and the aftermath. I'm glad you're all okay and thay you did get some rain at last.

SF said...

Oh my goodness, that is just so funny that I had to read it aloud to stuart!!! Kids can be so funny. :) SO glad you got that good rain; everywhere is so dry down south, and HOT from what we've heard.
Hope you're having a blessed week!
Saminda.

Cassandra said...

Woohoo on the rain!The storm sounded scary though...
What the kids said was funny! I love how their little minds think at those ages :-)

Kylie said...

Good to hear that you got a decent amount of rain out of the terrible storm. Hope there wasn't too much damage done around your property. Love the pictures of the boys! Miss you all.

Anonymous said...

I reckon you could do with some of the rain from Cyclone Ellie up north!!! All the North Qld rellies are moaning about how much rain they've had...still more floods predicted for this weekend, while you have just the opposite. Praying that you're all okay through this extreme heat...it seems that the ideal place to be is beautiful South East Qld at the moment, with extremes all around in each direction (over 60%of the state is classified flood disaster area). So, how did you manage to get bogged???????????????? So glad you're dammed was filled again..Love you all Mumxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Christy said...

Hey Renata. just wondering how you fared this weekend with all the bushfire danger.
we are all fine and safe. Pretty scary stuff though with dust storms around and fires 20 minutes away.
Hope your family, farm and community are ok.
Love Christy xo

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