The river has dropped

The river had dropped to a moderate level of flooding this morning & I've since heard that it is now at minor flood level. Glencoe Channel has no water over it now.

It pays to be careful on the roads though. There will be alot of damage on the roads from them being covered in water for so long.

The road is open

Glencoe Channel has finally been open today to traffic.
http://www.narrabriweather.net/

That will certainly make things easier around here for us. This morning the Lagoon was well down, with water still over the road but you could see it running over the edge of the road. No problems getting a car (or caravan!) out now.

It's been a grey cloudy day, but no rain yet. Showers had been predicted & it was lightly raining not long ago. Not convinced the rain has completely gone away - but for now as long as it holds off until next week I'm happy!

Thursday 16th December.

Been too busy today to find out too much about the flood levels. According to the river gauge - which is at Glencoe the river has been steady. Reports from people coming through during the day said that the Lagoon had about 0.2m water over the road. So it's not dropping much at all.

Hasn't helped that we've had 2 pretty big storms today. One about 5.30am & again this afternoon. Pretty short, but rain was very heavy. Depending on where the rain fell depends on how much it affects the river. If it's rained out in the scrub then the river level around the lagoon will most likely go up.

Wednesday 15th December

Lagoon Bridge 10th December - the road was closed.

Well we didn't get the thunderstorm as predicted yesterday which was good.

According to the BOM, the river level is set to remain steady until at least tomorrow morning. Looking at the river levels for Wee Waa & Narrabri, they are not going down very quickly at all. http://www.narrabriweather.net/

Talking to people who came to work this morning, the river level at the Lagoon Bridge is at 0.4 metre. At that level it is 4WD only. There are still helicopters about, mainly helping the outlying areas & farms with supplies.

The only road from Narrabri that is open is via Yarrie Lake - we call it the 'back' road. The main road - the Kamillaroi Highway has been closed virtually since the start of the flooding. The main problem now is the water on the other side of the Lagoon Bridge - where it is 0.4m deep. This is where it always floods when the water levels get to major flood level. They have been apparently been bringing people across there in the SES boat when requested.

Welcome

After 10 days or so of getting increasingly frustrated with the amount of misinformation about the flood situation, I've decided to start this blog. It's immediate aim is to try & provide accurate information from within the levee bank. 

I've already blogged about our experiences so far with the flood. http://jobeesjournal.blogspot.com/ 

Today again we've had a range of stories from 'the river is rising get out now (referring to people who live in Narrabri who want to go home)' to the river is steady & isn't going to rise much more - which is closer to the truth. It seems, to me anyway that some members of the SES have a bit of problem working out that the way they speak to people on the phone is the difference between calm acceptance of the situation & mass panic.

For now, the best site to look at is http://www.narrabriweather.net  Currently it has an extensive list of all the road closures in the area (updated once a day from Narrabri Shire information). It also goes into the river levels & has direct links to the gauges on the rivers that are flooding.

The Bureau of Meterology (BOM) is now predicting a Severe Thunderstorm to hit the area (14/12/10). http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDN65156.shtml