Of Droughts and Flooding Rains ...

This is not the best *pano* done in 2010, it is instead the *best* natural event to occur in a long time. The year 2010 is the year our worst drought in decades was broken by a series of wonderful, drenching storms!

Low pressure troughs and an increase in atmospheric water vapor combined to trigger massive storm fronts, occasionally super-cells, that swept through the dry countryside, filling dams to overflowing and soaking the once parched earth with much needed rain.

Rivers rose and spilled out across the flood plains once again. People and animals alike had to retreat to high ground. Many areas across the eastern half of Australia experienced major flooding, and still the rains keep coming.

In the last few months the Albury region has recorded over 100mm of monthly rainfall. This compares to less than 5mm or occasionally no rain in previous years over the same time period.

I remember the 1974 floods in Wagga, just north of here, and my father volunteering to help fill the sandbags to shore up the levee banks. The 1974 floods also followed a great drought that saw Wagga's Lake Albert dry up to a muddy puddle, and the once great Murrumbidgee River so low you could walk across it and barely get your ankles wet.

This great land is characterized by droughts, followed by flooding rains. They have happened many times before, and they will both happen again.

Australia - New Zealand / Australia

Lat: 37° 2' 12" S
Long: 146° 56' 24" E

Elevation: 325m (1066') AMSL

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.

Camera: Nikon D70, with Nikkor 16mm f2.8 lens.
Handheld, no tripod.
Stitched with PTGui Mac.
Retouched with Photoshop Elements (Mac).
Nadir and zenith patched using CubicConverter to extract and reinsert the images.