Weather
Everyone knows that the weather forecast is not an exact science. We have been through some pretty rough weather here over the last two weeks. To be fair the weather man told us the storms were on the way, we just didn't understand or foresee the damage that would be caused by them.
Yesterday the weather channel started warning us of another massive storm on its way. Cyclonic force winds with heavy rain. Severe flood warnings, tie up any loose items in your yard that might become missiles in the wind, prepare to lose power as many more trees were predicted to fall. The State Emergency Service was on full standby.
This time we listened. We got out candles and left them in easy to find places along with the matches to light them. We set up our new camping gas stove in the kitchen. We put the kids to bed with their new "wind-up" torches all wound and ready to light the way to the toilet. The pc and all other electrical appliances were unplugged. The car was moved away from the path the flood waters took last week. The trenches in the back yard were checked. We text and rang family to tell them we were ok and well prepared but that we might be out of contact again over the coming days if the power and phone lines went down.
With the kids tucked up in bed Byron and myself sat glued in front of the weather channel and watched the radar pictures of the storm moving from Sydney up the east coast. We were predicted to be in the eye of the storm at Midnight. It was horribly unsettling. There was nothing to do but wait. The storm moved more slowly than first predicted and when we heard that it was due to hit at 4am we decided to go to bed and get whatever sleep we could.
I can't say that we slept very well and it did rain very heavily during the night but at 5am when I looked at my bedside locker to see the electric alarm clock still working I knew that it hadn't been bad enough to lose power.
When we looked out the window everything was grey but there was no major damage. On went the news and it looks like the weather system skirted around us and we only got the light tail end of it. There were a few big trees down on our way to school but nothing blocking roads or crushing the power lines like last week.
For once we were thankful that the weather man not is not always right!
