Scott T: The Blog
The photo-post
Posted Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 10:43pm by ScottTagged: everyday, water
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, this post should cover me for silence over the last few months. As always, click the picture for an enlarged view.
Just a random assortment of images from my life over the past four months.
Now for a brief explanation: Firstly, I do admit I've gone a little coffee-crazy recently. The image top-left has some 35kg of green beans sitting in it... by my math it's 2 years worth of beans (assuming I'm the only person to drink the coffee). All those greens do explain the third image down on the left too - home roasting is the next step in my hobby, and it's rather fun being able to choose some different varieties to roast in a session and then individually sample them over the following weeks. Latte art seems to be getting better too - can get things resembling a heart or rosetta most attempts now, even though they're not perfect.
The water did get quite high at one point back in February - the jetty is shown with water lapping the boards. It was quite strange to walk along the jetty getting wet feet when only a year or so ago the jetty barely reached the water. I also headed home for the Easter regatta in April, but unfortunately didn't get much sailing done. Yet another year with no breeze over the Saturday or Sunday (while the days leading up to the weekend would have been great).
Also back in Feb/Mar we had a few power interruptions which got annoying quickly - after the 3rd or 4th within a four week period I splurged on a UPS. One could say I've wasted money, but I say it's doing it's job - we haven't had a single power blip since =P That said, if the power does go out, the computer should be good for some 45 minutes now with both monitors off and left completely idle.
Unfortunately, the weather is definitely cooling off now - still tolerable during the day but below 5C each night makes it a little hard to get up each morning... bed is much nicer =P
Lake Update
Posted Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:39am by ScottTagged: water
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Just to re-iterate how much water is flowing at the moment, I just received this photo of the current lake level.
Wow.
Summer Rain
Posted Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 9:03pm by ScottTagged: water
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Really have been neglecting this blog a bit the last few months. Have been meaning to get two different posts up recently, but will instead just combine it into one. Anyway - some of you may have heard that Australia's had a fair bit of rain recently. Queensland in particular has had flooding in the south and a cyclone through the north. Victoria, Northern NSW and Tasmania have also received pretty heavy rain in the last few weeks. SA has hence had a rather large inflow down the river for the last few months which has lead to the removal of the regulator at the entrance to Lake Bonney and it's now above the natural pool level. Photos will be below.
Prior to this, we had a few fairly heavy storms drift over the state two months ago.
This brought quite a bit of rain as well as flooding.
Just looking back through the weather history, December had 95mm; January 99mm; and 82mm so far in February. That totals to 276mm for approximately 2 and a half months. Impressive effort considering the annual average is only around 220mm, with even lower rainfalls in recent years due to drought.
As I mentioned however, all this rain throughout the Murray-Darling catchment has increased flow dramatically. Last Friday, the Murray River had ~92.5GL flow across the border for the day - again, somewhat higher than usual given that around this time last year, the flows were only a few GL (can't find any exact numbers - sorry). Although the high water has caused issues interstate, SA hasn't had much trouble yet. On the other hand, the high water means the regulator to the lake was finally removed!
This, in turn, has allowed the lake to fill back up above and beyond the natural pool level.
That small stump in the second photo is the one I've been focusing on for the last few years (second from the left in my current header picture). Just for comparison purposes, here's a side-by-side of the two extremes.
Keep in mind that the 'full-lake' photo is more than a month old, so the actual lake level is slightly higher again =)
Goodbye, Winter
Posted Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 8:32pm by ScottTagged: everyday, sailing, water
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October long weekend is just about over, and the weather was absolutely wonderful - particularly for sailing. Saturday and Sunday held the usual LBYC Opening Regatta - a small selection of photos is available. Both days provided plenty of wind for the sailors, with several people going swimming and quite a number of 'almost' stories being traded on the Sunday afternoon. Also considering that the weekend was one of sailing, I didn't break trend and managed to gain a light pink tinge to my upper arms and nose - fortunately a long way off the bright red glow I've obtained on previous occasions.
Quite incredibly, the water level has also been raised - the current photo used for my header graphic is well and truly out of date.
Not too far off the old pool level at all. Even better news is that with all the recent rain further upstream in the last few weeks, water levels are expected to rise even further which will be great to see.
Obviously, being a long weekend, I was expecting traffic to be fairly hectic. I believe I was ahead of it on the Friday evening (not too many cars to worry about the length of the trip home), however the return leg earlier this-afternoon was a bit busier. One of the ferry crossings was the busiest I've seen it for quite some time, while I've heard that the highway from home to Adelaide got worse, the close to Adelaide you got.
As much as the rain of the past 6 months has been nice, I'm certainly looking forward to the warmer weather of the next month or two - bring on October!
Refilling of the Lake
Posted Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 5:11pm by ScottTagged: uni, water
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It's been a few months since the last post, and considering the events I'm about to cover occurred back in September, it is safe to say they are a little overdue. Ultimately, Uni got in the way of things but I have some spare time again now, since I've finished for the year (and, possibly, ever :D).
Anyway, back towards the end of September a partial re-fill of the lake began. After nearly 2 years of separation, the water had receded quite some distance.
The refill this time is supposed to be up around the 26 gigalitre mark (source: ABC Online). Instead of the pipes used at the end of last year, a proper gate has been installed which allows a pretty reasonable amount of water through.
As usual, the Lake Bonney gallery has been updated with a few extra photos.
