WILL it be a 1975 flood, or a 1931 flood, or even a 1956 flood?
The truth of the matter, with the Murray expected to peak at Colignan about a week from now, is that this is the 2022 flood and, regardless of river-height and flow comparisons, it will not be identical to anything that occurred half a century or more ago.
It's going to be a big flood, for sure, but if the river was flowing and rising as wildly as speculation, the T&G clock would just about be submerged by now.
The excitement is understandable. The river only has to rise a few centimetres to spread hundreds of metres into low-lying bushland, or swamp a road, or cover very public areas such as the Mildura riverfront, and that gets people saying OMG all over social media.
Then you have stories such as we've heard this week about an evacuation order for Iraak, where some farming properties will be isolated, and the urgent Mildura Council construction of a 3km levee to protect the west of Mildura. Such stories are important and a reminder that floods do indeed threaten destruction, but neither came out of nowhere.
The flood responses of emergency bodies and government agencies is based on modelling which is based on current facts as well as historical information which, at a local level, is complemented by the advice of people who lived through the big floods of the past. Put together, this information paints us a picture of how the river is likely to behave today, not what it did in years gone by.
It's not perfect, but it's not guesswork, either. It takes into account such things as land clearing, reforestation, flood mitigation works and ground saturation, all of which have changed over the decades.
A good example of how it works well can probably be found at Nangiloc. There's sandbagging and levee reinforcement going on, but local people are being kept informed as to why and Sunraysia Daily has been told that's helping them stay calm and confident about what's to come. And Nangi's actually doing all right out of the whole thing, because the volunteers and emergency workers building those protections have to buy their lunches somewhere.
The point here is that although Nangiloc-Colignan people are about to face the flood peak, the urgency of that has them focused on necessary facts, rather than fear, and so they can calmly deal with whatever they have to. Downstream at Mildura, many people seem more interested in discussing what their mate's brother's wife's great uncle used to say about what happened in '56, which may well be interesting but is unlikely to be very helpful.
So, with the peak a week away from Mildura, here are the facts, as of Thursday afternoon.
The Murray at Wakool Junction is steady near a peak of 11.75 metres, with major flooding higher than the 1975 flood event. At Boundary Bend, it is likely to peak near 9.05 metres around Friday, with major flooding higher than the 1975 event.
At Euston, the river may peak near the major flood level (10.3 metres, 52.14 metres AHD) around early next week, and at Mildura Weir it is likely to exceed the moderate flood level (37.50 metres AHD) around Sunday. The river level may peak near the major flood level (38.5 metres AHD) late next week (25-27 November).
The Murray at Wentworth may peak near the major flood level (33.88 metres AHD) around 26-30 November.
Yes, all that information is from the Bureau of Meteorology and you could have got it from there. If you really want to know what's happening, you should do that every day, because the bureau uses facts, not speculation.
