You've probably heard that my home town had a little storm over the weekend with associated hail damage and some minor flooding. There was minor debris all over the place afterwards.
Two days later and I'm off to ride to work this morning (yes, on a public holiday, thanks very much!) after another night of heavy rainfall. As I headed off MLSP cautioned, "Watch out for all the debris on the road."
"No worries", I replied, "all this rain will have washed it away."
Famous last words
How wrong can you be?
First up there was this sort of stuff everywhere except on the busiest roads, where the wheels of many cars probably helped sweep the roads clean:
This lot is not likely to be washed away any time soon.
Wherever there were trees, there was debris.
Then I got off road and literally ran out of path:
Yes, there really is a sealed path here—I can only assume this area was under water during the storm.
This mat of plant material stretched for at least 30m—again I can only assume that this area was awash during the storm.
Update: 11 March
Full credit to the local council, there must have been a huge amount of post-storm clean-up across the municipality but this mess was completely cleared by Thursday. In fact, this path is far tidier than it usually is at this time of year!
On the return leg in the evening, the Yarra Trail had its various patches of mud, slop, soggy plant matter and silt:
A sandy deposit on the Yarra Trail.
And as the debris shows here, if I'd tried to use the Glenferrie Road underpass in the morning, I would have been swimming:
This spot is regularly inundated by flash flooding.
Compare and contrast with the height of another recent inundation.