Inundated with goats

Here's a headline you don't see too often...

Roma to be inundated with goats

The floodwater has cleared from the streets of the southern Queensland township in Roma just in time for the annual goat racing carnival. Roma had its fourth major flood in just over a year when the water peaked at 7.6 metres earlier in the week...."Goats will run up the road all right, but put a cart in behind them and they'll want to roll over or go backwards and do all the things that shouldn't be done," he said.

Below is a chart from the Bureau of Meteorology webpage for a nearby river:

Bungil Ck at Tindarra

It may be a bit hard to see, but each vertical line is a day and this shows the last 8 days. The higher the line is, the deeper the river is. The three horizontal words are the flood levels of minor, moderate and major (which roughly translates into "that's annoying", "hey, that's not good" and "sweet lord, this is the end!")

For days and days it was flat at zero, a totally dry channel. Then in 20 minutes there was 4 feet (1.5m) of water, in 2 hours it was 10 feet (3.5m) and in 12 hours it was 24 feet (8m) deep. Even then, they still had enough advance warning to sandbag the town.

All the more remarkable is how quickly it has dropped. Now it's back to only a couple feet deep 2 days later, just in time for Easter weekend.

To me, the graph looks like an elephant inside a snake. Maybe it's a goat?