What's the temperature where you are???

[Jenbirdee]

6 pm

 

[sourland]

80F at 6:15 PM - predicted to be hotter tomorrow

 

[Brooks_]

A brisk 79 F. Dropping to the upper 50's overnight.

94 (1986) 41 (1978)

 

[LTAY1946]

81° and partly cloudy

 

[kikiruru]

Back home feels 78 Sunday 538 pm

 

[janiedoe]

64f and raining. The tornado risk has passed but the rain will continue all night.

 

[Nym]

Monday 29th April 9.22a.m., mostly clear sky, 3.7 / 5.5kph ENE, Hg 62%, 21.4C / 70.5F top of 26C / 79F. Possible late shower. Marine wind warning.

Moon is 76.1%

Channel Country blooms as floodwaters transform outback desert, stunning tourists​

2 hours 9 mins ago​

By Grace Nakamura and Hannah Walsh​

The Channel Country transformed after floodwaters. (ABC Western Queensland: Hannah Walsh)

Behind the bar of the Betoota Hotel, Robert "Robbo" Haken is this year fielding a common question from tourists passing through on their way to Birdsville.

"They're all just [asking], 'Where's the desert?'," he said.

"They can't see the desert because all the green is growing over the sand."

Famously "red dirt country", Queensland's far west is instead a blanket of vivid green, the result of months-long flooding through the desert.

The dusty single-lane highway into Birdsville, 1,500 kilometres west of Brisbane, is lined with lush grass, dotted with yellow and purple wildflowers.

For Mr Haken, it's a special sight.

" I don't think you're ever gonna see it quite as pretty as what it is at the moment," he said.

"It's just something totally different from what we're used to seeing."

Earlier this year, ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily drenched the state's north, with water travelling hundreds of kilometres south to the Channel Country towards the Kati-Thanda Lake Eyre basin in South Australia.

Birdsville, a town of 110 in the Channel Country — near where the Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia borders meet — became an inland sea.

And when the water receded, the landscape bloomed.

Tourists 'flabbergasted'​

Behind Birdsville's iconic red sand dunes, the horizon slowly changes into a wetland.

Big Red Tours owner Alex Oswald said tourists were "flabbergasted."

"I've never seen so many pelicans," he said.

"It doesn't go hand in hand with [the desert] that we've got pelicans flying over the top and having a good feed on the Diamantina Crossing that's usually dry.

"If you fly over the area, it's just a massive carpet of green."

Tourist Brie Dickson said it was a different picture to the one she had imagined.

"It's a bit of mixture between red and green, which is really cool to see, two contrasting colours like that," she said.

"It definitely would have been less green in my mind."

Pilot Jonathon Rae has the best view in Birdsville as he flies tourists over the flourishing country.

"It's just exploded with colours," he said.

"All the dormant seedlings that lay underneath that cracked claypan just explode to life, so you get this abundance of colours, greenery, wildflowers shooting through."

From the air, the meandering pathways of floodwaters glisten in the rising sun.

"You wouldn't believe that it was in the middle of the desert," Mr Rae said.

"You really have to see it from above to believe it."

Textures change constantly during a scenic flight from Birdsville into South Australia.

The Channel Country is named after the numerous intertwined rivulets that cross the region.

 

[Nym]

4.43p.m. 8 days of rain forecast getting grey over the lake. Lovely and warm! Hg 45%

 

[chrissynemetz]

39°F light rain
1:35 a.m.

 

[Jenbirdee]

6am