A wet bang to the mouth

Dwarskloof Farm – Greyton South Africa 13 November 2008:
It has rained solidly for almost 3 days. We had 55mm of rain on Tuesday; 72mm of rain Wednesday and, so far, in the first 5 hours of Thursday another 22mm. it continues. The vines were due to have their second drink on Tuesday a mere (forgive pun) 5mm. They have now had the equivalent of 6 months of rain – if it only worked like that. In 3 days the sun will bake the ground and I will be trying to get the irrigation system to work.

The result of this excess is that I now know that the water reticulation works and that the dam is full and that the gateway to the farm is/was blocked. Greyton too is cut-off and this merited a mention on the national TV (SABC 1, 2, 3). I laboured with the mini-digger for a couple of hours in the pissing rain and cleared a way BUT fear that now, 12 hours and 50mm of more rain later, that my toil was in vain

Talking of Blocks. Al 'n' Val has had to put off their adventure to the animal park at Inverdoorn until the water abates. We have broken into the emergency red and white wine stock (the unmarked 65p a bottle stuff).

It's almost a year to the day since the last once in a hundred year storm. Surely it should have been another 99 years?

The young vines look well though. They haven't been washed out of the ground and there is evidence of budding.

A South African farmer was interviewed tonight, on the SABC News, about the fact that his harvest of table grapes would more than likely be wiped out by the storm. He agreed with the reporter and smiled and shrugged and said 'hell that's nature'.

I await the dawn to see what havoc nature has wrought.

I feel most sorry for Al 'n' Val. Their first trip to SA and marooned with us. No Monopoly board games and dwindling emergency wine stocks.

A technical note:
55mm of rain is equivalent of 55litres per square metre. 55 litres is roughly 11 UK gallons. Each vine has a catchment of 1 square meter.

Isn't that interesting?