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RESIDENTS IN TOWNSVILLE, Australia, have been urged not to walk or play in floodwaters following multiple crocodile sightings in the city which experienced “once-in-a-century floods” over the weekend.
Police in Townsville issued a warning to residents after hearing several reports of children playing in the flood waters and as well as removing road closure signs.
“Playing in flood waters is extremely dangerous, not just because of the unpredictable nature of the water itself, but also because what may lie beneath the surface. Crocodiles have been reported in flood waters in parts of Townsville, and there can also be snakes and other wildlife present.”
“Removing road closure signs is also extremely dangerous for people driving around on the island – and doing so could lead to a tragedy,” Townsville police said in a statement.
The floods in northeast Australia have turned streets into rivers and forced thousands to abandon their homes. Australia’s tropical north typically experiences heavy rains during the monsoon season at this time of the year, but the recent downpour has far exceeded normal levels.
‘Stay out of the water’
Townsville resident, Erin Hahn, posted a photo of a freshwater crocodile in her father’s driveway on Facebook last night.
“Cannot stress it enough to stay out of the water,” she posted.
Speaking to local media, Hahn believed the crocodile she spotted outside her father’s house was a metre or two long. She added that it swam off down the road shortly after the photo was taken.
It’s just crazy when it’s outside of your home.
Australia’s Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch warned that crocodiles and snakes could turn up in unexpected places during flooding.
“Crocodiles prefer calmer waters and they may move around in search of a quiet place to wait for floodwaters to recede.”
“Crocodiles may be seen crossing roads, and when flooding recedes, crocodiles can turn up in unusual places such as farm dams or waterholes where they have not been seen before,” Enoch said.
A year’s worth of rain
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said a slow-moving monsoonal trough was sitting above Queensland, with some areas expected to receive more than a year’s worth of rain before conditions ease.
Bureau meteorologist Adam Blazak told AFP the downpours could continue until Thursday, while floodwaters will take some time to recede even when the rains lessen.
The region receives an average of about 2,000 millimetres (6.5 feet) of rain annually, but some towns are already on track to pass that.
With reporting from © – AFP, 2019
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The last picture with the guys legs hanging over the boat really says a lot.
Lake Placid 4….
@Jim Buckley Barrett: somebody call Mick Dundee
Roo burgers are yesterday’s news. Now it’s Croc burgers on the barbi
@Paul: gimme a croc burger and make it snappy!
Global warming is true….Global tempature has increased by 0.7C in last 120 years….Question is was this natural or man made process…
@iComment: “As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years (0.08 to 0.14 Celsius per century). In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.”
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php
It was pointed out way back in 1897 by Svante Arrhenius that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that adding more CO2 warms the planet, this is not complex science that up for debate, climate change was predicted in the late 19th century. In the last 119 years, burning of fossil fuels has increased atmospheric CO2 from 296 ppm to 405 ppm, an increase of 37%.
In that time there has no increase in the brightness of the Sun, no giant volcanic eruptions adding massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, nor massive changes in ocean circulation that could explain this very rapid warming of the planet that has never been witnessed in the last 2 million years. It leaves man’s influence as the obvious culprit
Arrhenius, S. and Holden, E.S., 1897. On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Earth. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 9(54), pp.14-24.
@David Jordan:
“Global warming” is tied to comparing and obsessing about global temperature anomalies to NASA’s arbitrarily, non scientifically chosen 1950-1980 temperature baseline. Look at why they chose it, it is because it was “easy to recall” for people living in the eighties and it coincided with the establishment of their GISS program.
Had temperatures not barely detectably risen since then, there’d have been public panic about impending global cooling.
It has warmed slightly, but you will find it hard to scientifically attribute any detrimental affect of that warming on the global climate outside of natural variability, unless you believed that in the 70s we were headed for global cooling and that we luckily headed that off by emitting more CO2 into the atmosphere.
@Jaycee Laycee: Even since the industrial revolution mind you
@iComment:
Any idea how much the temperature changed in previous 1000 million years…one century worth doesn’t seem reliable evidence
‘stralia mate!!
Global warming – Fake news
@@at: provd it
@@at: prove
@@at:
Biggest fake news for a long time too
@@at: you’re a moron.
“Great!!, house flooded, carpet ruined….and now, there’s a Croc in the driveway!!”
Send in Paul Hogan
“Townsville”
Translation: town town.
Kind of like naan bread
@Michael Herron: or Gateaux cakes
Government water conservation notice:
DO NOT KEEP
PET CROCODILES
IN YOUR BATH
Global warming is causing the crocodiles to be substantially larger. How come nobody is talking about this
have your say