That's ridiculous, everyone knows it was global warming. 

Funny how God is supposed to work in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Unless you happen to be a Reverend or a Church Official. They "know" exactly what the motivations of god are and why he does all the things he does.

Unless someone throws an argument at them that they can not answer. Then they fall back on the "God is a Mystery" argument. God is only a mystery when they conveniently need him to be. God is unknowable when they need him to be.

Otherwise, they know all the reasons behind god's motivations.

Well, he tweets them every day, so of course they know.

Good point, but I believe () god/s/dess is capable of flexibility. 

I'm glad you're both safe.

Some photos:

This was looking along a 4-lane highway - those are lighting poles along between the two directions of the highway:

The waters have just started to recede on the other side of my 'island', this morning at sunrise:

This is horrible, I feel for these unfortunate people.  I can't even imagine this kind of thing happening to my community.  My heart goes out to you and your community.

A couple of shots of that highway about 12 hours later:

From that overpass:

Yeah, quite a bit.

An economist has estimated its overall  impact on the economy will be comparable, in relative terms, to Katrina in the US.

Queensland actually sells a lot of coal to places like China. We have some other mineral resources too.

And of course the Federal government will definitely be helping out - the army is heavily involved, we have 19 helicopters from them helping with search and rescue, and bringing in supplies to isolated people, and men and vehicles on the ground as well. They have vehicles which are well suited to getting through damaged roads and debris-strewn countryside.

We have also had pledges of help from other countries.

The irony of the rich here has been that there was a premium on river-front properties... May drop a little now.

Our dams are holding up. The main dam relevant to this flood may well have helped keep it a meter or so below what it might have been, but it has been overflowing on its main spillway for a while now (hence the 190%). They have been trying to let a little out now, not enough to push the flood levels up again, but trying to get the dam levels back down, in case there is another heavy period of rain that they can catch and hold back from making the flood worse again.

I bet if we asked the religious community leaders for an explanation of that, there answer would be : God works in mysterious ways and we can not know his will (unless it fits their needs of course, hehe).

Thanks for the updates about the situation down under. I wish you guys the best of luck.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott this yesterday was moved to say "The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike..."

Does that count?

Hey Bob, Good to hear you're alright. What a helluva week this has been. I spent my teens living in the Lockyer valley so I've been on tenterhooks waiting for news of my friends on and over the range. Out here on the granite belt we got some really serious flooding on Monday when a private dam broke banks. It has hung around right through the week. Fortunately no casualties beyond the hundred or so creek front homes and streets that are now basically mince. My house is on a hill far enough away from the rising water to have got by unscathed and town is having a big communal clean up tomorrow so I'm breaking out the rake and gumboots to go help the neighbours at the other end of my street.

One thing I want to say, about this event. I live on a Mountain 1km above sea level, it would seem living here a person could feel pretty secure about their chances in a flood. But Monday afternoon absolutely shook me to the core - Toowoomba is a Mountain city only 2-300m lower than the Summit of the Great Dividing Range in QLD, by any cursory estimation it would seem an ideal place to run when water got high.  That I'd ever witness such a great torrent of water rushing straight down the main street of a mountain top city was virtually unthinkable before this week. The idea of it is enough to give one nightmares for a long time, let alone the fact that you might have friends in the midst of drama.

Another shock was the idea that after record flooding in Northern NSW compounded with inconceivably immense flooding across QLD, cutting towns off for days to weeks, there could imaginably be more and far far worse to come ? I haven't seen its like in all my life. The roads all around me were already chopped up by rushing water, Two of my friends had already been stranded at my house, consecutive weeks, while travelling, and people in Warwick were just moving their stuff back in, Rockhampton hadn't even peaked, Condamine and Theodore were still evacuated. I'm sure I could be forgiven for having expected things were due to calm down for a while...

So Bob, how about you, was there a moment during this week that shook your personal assumptions out of their cosy pocket?

PS Anyone want to see pics of the floods in my town?

Since it's from God, does this mean the politicians are off the hook for not building better flood control systems? No need to improve the dams and dykes in the future?

Eloise, I experienced the 1974 flood from the other side of the river, and was far closer to the effects of it. That was a far more stunning experience, as the flood crept a few feet into the very lowest corner of our backyard before stopping. I witnessed it progressively engulfing the houses further down the slope of the street.

I actually went out onto it in my inflatable boat, and helped rescue some floating property for my neighbours, including sliding a refrigerator out of the kitchen window of a house two doors away and balancing it across my boat.

This time was very different. The dominant impression was the disparity between the normalcy of my experience in and around my house and the surrounding neighbourhood, with only a couple of hours loss of power, with what I saw when I travelled in either direction along the main road route through the area until I reached the 'road closed' signs. I estimate my property is about 100 feet above the peak, so if it ever got to me, our city would truly be history.

That was surreal. Right up to that point where I could see the water, everything looked normal, especially once the rain had mostly cleared. I went out several times to look, including in the very early morning when the water was expected to be around its peak, just to bring home to me the reality that it was an event of similar magnitude to '74.

I kept following the coverage from ABC-TV's 24-hour news channel, to remind myself of it, as much as anything.

I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised, that very few acknowledged the very real likelihood that this sort of thing was no longer a 'once in a century' event, with the progress of climate change. So many people did reassure themselves that it was still such an event, and unlikely to hit them again. Understandable of course, but that does worry me.

Eighty years between the first historical flood in Brisbane in the 1890's, another 40 years to this one, which has been far more widespread both within the state and beyond. Not proof of the GW connection, but entirely consistent with the scenario.

At least one or two local expert commentators, and one who spoke from the US, did point this out.

I genuinely experienced pangs of empathic sorrow for the various tragic personal stories covered in the news.

If I had not experienced '74, as my younger fellow citizens had not, I am sure it would have had far more impact on me emotionally.

The military choppers flying everywhere was another difference from '74.

Those scenes of the torrents in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley are seared into my memory.

By yesterday afternoon, they had already opened one direction of that flooded highway I photographed, as well as both directions of the bridge, so I have been impressed at the pace of recovery, although the effects will linger for a long time in some areas, for many people.

So no shaking of my assumptions, it has just further strengthened, if anything, my understanding that there is no purpose or ultimate meaning to the world we inhabit, at any level beyond the important reality of our empathy for the other members of our society. The amount of help being offered by neighbours and even complete strangers, whenever the opportunity arose, was encouraging. I experienced and participated in that in '74.

Nature can strike at any time. There is no ultimate justice, no 'higher power', apart from the blind power of cosmic forces, no balancing of good vs evil, beyond what we can effect ourselves.

This time, I wondered if I should register as a volunteer, and I would have gone out if it was all happening much closer, and I did not have some pressing work to get done.

Now one third of the entire state of Victoria is underwater. El Nina. You evil girl.

I lived and worked in Toowoomba for 10 months early in my career, so I still feel some extra empathy for and connection to the place.

I drove regularly thru or near those places in the Lockyer valley on my frequent commutes to and from Brisbane, as well.

The main residual problem for me now is shortages of my favorite vegetables on supermarket shelves.

The last shopping center that I regularly visit to come back 'online' (ie get power restored) was back in action yesterday, although it must have only just got back, since they were still restocking many of the shelves, especially in the freezers, that they would have had to clear out after the sustained loss of power they experienced.

Even in '74, I never saw any strong current near my house. At that time, I did get a glimpse of the main channel of the river from my boat, through a band of trees.

This time, I couldn't get close enough to the main river channel to see the current. I didn't bother to even try to launch my boat or kayak - I really wasn't close enough to a suitable place to launch it.

Went out on my bike this morning around one of my regular routes, which took me through the lowest area near here.

There was still a fair amount of smelly mud on the edges of the road in places, but it was really sad to see all the ruined furniture, personal possessions, etc, in great piles on the footpath ('sidewalk') in front of houses that had been really inundated. I couldn't bring myself to photograph it.