A small flood

I don’t think I have ever seen a weather phenomena like I did yesterday.

Our day started at 5am. We had three trucks to load and knew it was going to be hot. But it was freezing, when we first arrived at the yards, so the jeans and jumpers were pulled out of the wardrobe. Knowing Esperance the way I do, I always carry a couple of sets of clothes with me and by the time the kids got on the school bus at 7:50am I was in shorts and a t-shirt.

The wind was really strong and it was pretty warm, so the blokes from the Bush Fire Brigade had been in contact with each other all day to see if there should be a harvest ban on.

By 4pm there were dark clouds sweeping across the sky. Ones that looked like this:

Storm cell coming in from the north

Number one Son and I thought we’d really better get those sheep for shearing, up in the shed, so there was some chance they would stay dry. So we raced around and got as many as we could under cover.

After we’d done that, I had to get out the camera. I’ve always wanted to take a lightening shot and I finally got one!

My long awaited lightening shot.

Within a few minutes, the drops started and by the end of that first minute, you would have been lucky to see your hand in front of your face! It was bucketing down.!!

And the paddocks looked like this:

paddocks awash

…and the driveway looked like this:

our flooded driveway

We are some of the lucky ones who have finished harvest, but there are plenty who haven’t and I feel for them. This rain will have caused a lot of damage. The only good thing about a deluge like this, in our area, at this time of the year, is the run off into the dams. We won’t get a break in the worm cycle, flies and we’ll be back spraying all the summer weeds as soon as we’ve got off the header. So most of us won’t get a summer break.

But it was an incredible day of variances and just shows how much Mother Nature is actually in control.