So we went for a relaxing weekend camping with friends out at Geelkrans, about 16km outside Patensie on the Gamtoos river. There had been flooding in Steytlerville on Thursday and there was an advisory that about 215 cumec of water was expected on Sat at 14:00. A cumec is 10,000 litres per second. That would have meant there would be some flooding but the campsites would be ok. We were about 3 meters above the river so we should have been ok.
Well there were flash floods in Cradock on Friday and I was woken about 3am by a lot of noise outside. The noise was from the river coming down in flood and the river had risen a good 2 meters. We monitored it until about 5am and it seemed to have stabilised, so we went back to bed.
When we woke up at 7am it was still rising at about 30cm per hour. We decided that if it rose another 30cm we would pack up and go.
Not long after that, while making breakfast, the farmer arrived to say that the river was about to burst its banks behind us and that if we stayed we would have to move to higher ground and we would be marooned on an island until the waters dropped. At that stage there was about 600 cumec of water flowing. As the anticipated flood water hadn't reached us yet, we madly rushed to pack up and get out of there.
We had a lovely, extremely short, time there and will definitely go back there once they have recovered from the floods. Hopefully we haven't scared Louis and Michelle off camping!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment