Australian vineyards and terrible flooding!

[Roy Hersh]

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/44371

[Paul Fountain]

The vineyard damage, while bad, is nothing compared to the flooding they got in Queensland. Now the north is about to be hit with a huge cyclone, bigger than the one that devastated Darwin in 1974. None the less, it is still an extraordinary event for Victoria, particularly at this time of year. There was the unusual occurrence of Bushfire warnings for many of the areas that are currently flooded just a couple of days ago. I haven't heard a lot about the vines in the local news but the areas impacted are all farming areas, and I know that there have been a lot of fruit trees that have been destroyed so I'd imagine that there will be some vines lost as well, but in comparison to what Queensland got, or our bush fires from a couple of years ago - well it could have been worse.

[Andy Velebil]

I feel for your fellow Aussie's Paul, it seems the past few years the country has been pretty hard hit in places. Hopefully there isn't any loss of life from this latest storm....vines can always be replaced.

[Paul Fountain]

Only one death reported and that was incidental to the storm itself. Absolutely staggering given the scale of destruction.
It's somewhere over central Australia right now nad is interacting with another front that is causing flash flooding in Melbourne and making things very tropical indeed. Very unusual at any time of year let alone the middle of Summer when it is normally hot and dry. There is a knee high lake at my nearest street corner so I'd imagine that other parts of Melbourne are going to be very very wet.