More on Flooding in Australia

It is summer in Australia, and in other years it is around this time of year that the summer fire season down under would be ramping up. It was my intention to try to follow the 2011 summer fire season in Australia. They had been in a long term drought not so long ago. Things changed.

Sometime around the end of 2010 or early 2011 I first heard about widespread and catastrophic flooding in Australia. The videos I saw on the news were horrific. Words escape me and I wish that I could do something to help.

I suspect that given the moisture that will be present in the soil and the vegetation, even after these catastrophic flood recede, that the wildfire danger will be diminished. However, I am not exactly an expert on these matters. Nor am I familiar enough with Australian geography and weather patterns to know if there are areas in Australia that have not seen these flood waters that might be at risk for wildfires. I suppose that I'll find out as the summer months in Australia unfold.

That being said, I do want to provide a couple of resources for those of you who might want to see the effect of the catastrophic flooding in Australia. To that end, I am providing a couple of links. And here I am probably only touching the surface of coverage (media, personal accounts, etc) available on the internet.

1. Skynews Australia has a flooding webpage with reports and videos that may be found here.

2. A newspaper in Brisbane in Queensland AU, The Courier Mail has extensive coverage of the floods. This coverage includes, but is not necessarily limited to photo galleries (two may be found here and here, a story page with personal stories of devastation and hope, an interactive map of the Brisbane River Flood Crisis, and a link to a very good high resolution online mapping system of Australia that may be found here. And there are other links on the Courier Mail site that I am not including here.