Wild Weather in the Cove

By janiner, 17 January, 2025
News
Tree down

There have been two separate east coast lows off the east Mid North Coast in the last two weeks. As a result we have had a lot of rain and strong winds. We have an internet enabled weather station on our balcony. It is protected from the strong southerly winds, but it gives a good reading of the rain. So far this month we have had 291mm, of which 100mm has been in the last few days. We had 38mm in January 2024. The total rain for 2024 was 1853mm and the total for 2023 was 986mm.

The ground is so soggy that our neighbour has a large gum which toppled from the roots. It is now lying across three properties and luckily avoided any structures. We have also had three power outages in the last couple of days. Our solar battery has kept us going and we used the grid to recharge it in between power outages, but most of our neighbours have not been so fortunate.

I checked the Food Authority status for the Cove waterway and it is closed for oyster harvest. This means that the water quality is poor from all the rain and is currently unsuitable for harvesting oysters and also swimming. In summer the water quality generally improves fairly quickly, but a general rule of thumb is to avoid swimming whilst the water is brown.

So far we have been lucky in the Cove. The storm did a lot of damage to Raymond Terrace and surrounds on Wednesday night. Our niece’s house in Thornton is uninhabitable after hail blocked the downpipes and water poured into the ceiling cavity, which then collapsed. McDonalds at Heatherbrae was closed today and the remains of fallen trees are still evident. A flood watch remains in place for some Hunter rivers.  

A few weeks ago the ABC weatherman was saying it looks like we could have a La Nina developing – based on the past two weeks of rain it looks like he was correct

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