Kimberely wet season

[Member]

Sitting in Darwin Airport, got three hours before the red eye to Sydney.  Thought I' give a summary of our wet season that got off the blocks at a steady pace whilst the rest of the country got hammered.

The months of November to January were above average but nothing startling. February shaped up better but still bit ho-hum until TC Carlos came along.  From that point it got a bit serious raining everyday for the next three weeks.  I reached a climax over last weekend when a monsoon low drifted over the central east Kimberley and dropped all it had washing away Warmun (Turkey Creek) community in the process.  Kununurra has 300 flood refugees now for a while. 

The upshot is that Lake Argyle went from a level of 88.5 metres, the lowest in a couple of decades to its highest recorded height on Tuesday of just over 100 metres.  That rise equates to about 12 cubic kilometres of water.  The dam is full at 92 metres so we have about 8 metres of water flowing over the top and the dam is still rising.

Whilst the central and upper section of the Ord catchment got a good drink we got a fair bit less but the constant saturation over months has recharged the groundwater, springs may well run for years on the back of this wet.  It’s so wet that even sand plain country has water pouring out of it; you sink to your ankles. The footy oval is so wet they haven't been able to cut the grass. Playing touch the grass hides the ball completely and when you try to run into a hole in attack you sink deeper into the mire, the ball often sailing across in front of you as you try in vain to accelerate.

Here are a few pictures of the deluge

Ord River at Ivanhoe Crossing


Dunham River






The Diversion Dam, Lake Kununurra


Someone bogged on levy soil



Spillway at about 7 metres over






Pressure waves in there a good three metres high, the sound at the point is deafening


The cutting





Out there somewhere is the spillway wall, you can see the shadowmid picture.


Some dam stats

[Member]

G'Day Dick.. Great images..... Does anyone kayak down that Ord River white water below Lake Argyle?  Looks like fun 

fitz..

[Member]

G'Day Dick.. Great images..... Does anyone kayak down that Ord River white water below Lake Argyle?  Looks like fun 

fitz..

Someone was thinking about whitewater rafting but the Water Corp said no.  At those flow rates in the pic I think you may die.   From ground level some of those waves look like a beach break of two to three metres. 

[Member]

Someone was thinking about whitewater rafting but the Water Corp said no.  At those flow rates in the pic I think you may die.   From ground level some of those waves look like a beach break of two to three metres.

Looks like fun 

[Member]

Bugger.  I was just about to put my name down for that one.

Gordon

[Member]

nice one dick.  awesome power in that flow. 

cheers
kh

[Member]

I was fortunate to see a lot of these places just 1 month ago, and to see the magnitude now shown in the photos it makes one boggle at the volume of water in flow.
EG, Argyle is 8 metres above the spillway wall- a dam which is freaking massive in the first place.
Add 8 metres on that massive dam and OMG- mind blowing!!!!!!

[Member]

currently at 187% and presumably still rising, wont be home until next weekend. Cant wait to see it.

http://www.watercorporation.com.au/D/dams_storagedetail.cfm?id=22241

[Member]

Great report and pics Dick thanks 
That's a whole lot of water flowing there.

Paul

[Member]

Just to put it into perspective:

Lake Argyle at 187% is the equivalent of 25 Awoongas or 35 Mondurans!

Now that's a lot of water!

[Member]

Better throw in another Monduran or two, 196% today with a mob of rain up in the catchment the last day or two. 

http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/flood/kimberley.shtml

[Member]

Far out!! are people deadset keen to go fishing in these areas?

[Member]

Some more pictures from yesterday -


Even more water under the bridge and the power pole is in a bit of trouble.  Never been that high before.  They will be shutting down the hydro if the level gets too much higher or the pole goes.








Went for lap on the quad bike, about the only thing that stays on top of the ground now-a-days. Found this abandoned until it dries out a bit.  Got no more than 200 metres down a track before it sunk.  Got the bike stuck once following my tracks back across a wet spot, dug for a while then reved and pushed, saved a five k walk.





One place I went was to have a look at the second spillway, a natural saddle between two seperate watercourses.  Should the water get higher than the saddle it'll run into a creek that will take the water downstream of the dam wall.  The level still has a few metres to go. The saddle is just around to the left of the pic.







A couple of the spillway cutting

[Member]

Unbelievable Dick, one can't imagine the magnitude of how much water is in Argyle now. Thanks for sharing the pics

[Member]

Great pics Dick, that would have been a huge trip down stream in a raft, you'd never get insurance though, too much like suicide. You think a few fish went down for the ride?
JD