Narrabri resident Ian Foxe was marooned in his house on the corner of Reid and Doyle Street after Saturday afternoon’s heavy storm struck.
The storm dumped from 35 to 50mm across town within a short space of time. Narrabri Weather website reported the weather station at the Plant Breeding Institute recorded 54mm in half an hour.
The median rainfall for November is usually about 59mm.
In total across the weekend, Narrabri Airport recorded 70.8mm, Bellata 31mm, but Boggabri only 6mm.
The weekend downpour resulted in a sea stretching from Barwan Street outside the Narrabri Public School and further down Doyle street.
At Ian Foxe’s corner, it looked like the 1971 flood.
Ian phoned the council and staff member Tony Nott was promptly on the scene.
Tony, the rostered on-call team leader for road services inspected the problem with Ian but there was nothing that could be done. Ian said he appreciated the prompt response by Mr Nott.
“I understand that a sudden downpour of an inch of rain is not going to drain away immediately,” said Ian.
“But this happens every time there is a heavy storm and I bet the problem comes from blockages in the drain under the rail corridor across the road from Reid Street.
“I think the engineer will find the system has collapsed.
“The drainage pipes are too small in any case. They need to be big enough to take the water which drains out of Nandewar and other streets which comes down here.
“There is no drainage from the public school to here.”
He added that the drainage at the southern end of Reid Street worked and that area remained unflooded.
Small whirlpools at the inlet for the system revealed that the drainage was working, slowly.
Ian said the answer lay in investigating the drainage pipes leading from his area to Doctor’s Creek.
“If sufficiently large pipes were installed in that fairly short section it would make a very big difference.”
The drainage system of Narrabri is many decades old and it needs some work at this spot, he added.
Approximately 400 homes and businesses in Narrabri, Wee Waa and surrounding areas experienced power outages due to Saturday’s storm.
“Lightning was the main cause of damage to the electricity network, with our local crews replacing six transformers and attending approximately 60 individual premises to replace network equipment including fuses,” said Essential Energy regional manager Ben Williams.
Essential Energy restored power to all homes and businesses in Narrabri and Wee Waa on Saturday, but continued to work on Sunday to restore power to a number of rural sites including irrigation pumps.
Narrabri State Emergency Service (SES) controller Tony Battam said the SES was called to two incidents, one on Friday and the other on Saturday.
“On Friday night we were called to a tree on Kaputar Road that was hit by lightning, it was still up but threatening to fall on their shed,” Mr Battam said.
An arborist was called to assess it.
On Saturday the SES was called after trees fell on to the road at Turrawan, two kilometres from the highway.
Narrabri Shire Council was then called to clear the trees.