Bad Storms

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morpheus21

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WARNING LONG DRAWN OUT STORY FOLLOWS

Hi,
just had a really bad storm yesterday. It was the worst storm that I have seen hit our area( I'm sure there have been worse as I'm only 19 and havent seen that much), I live at Withcott which is at the bottom of the Toowoomba range. It was really quite impressive. We saw it coming but I didn't think it would hit because almost every other time there is a storm it only just touches us. The clouds had lots of green in them and there was some impressive lighting before it hit us. It created a dull roar from all the wind and as soon as it hit us it blew over our bantam chicken coop in the backyard. The coop is just a steel frame cage with a colourbond roof and chicken wire with some tarp on one side. The tarp and the roof must have created a sail effect as it blew over straght away. My sister and I rushed up to get them and the poor things were so wet already and all huddled together and scared looking, I seriously thought they were going to get blowen away from the wind as they are only small. As soon as we got the last one to safety it started pelting down hail, jagged looking hail, usually the rare times that it hails at are place it is pea size smooth hail, and the biggest ones almost the size of golfballs. The wind was so strong that the rain and hail was practically coming down horizontly. We have a colourbond roof and outdoor area and the noise from the hail was deafening, I seriously could not hear myself yelling.

The hail stopped after about 15-20 mins and the rain about 5 mins later. All in all the storm lasted about half an hour. The sun came from behind the clouds and it was so incredibly hot, as it had been for the last few days and I originally wanted the storm to hit cause it hadn't rained in a while and I thought it would cool the rest of the day down, except for the ground which was nice and cool from all the hail.

Had a look around to see if anything had been damaged and luckily nothing realy was. A few branches from a eucalypt broke down, most plants and trees had varying degrees of shreded leaves, one paperbark in our front yard broke in half but it had been split in 2 for years. The worst thing was that the power went out 5 mins before it hit and I didn't know how the fish would like it without their water being aerated. 5 and a half hours later when the power came back on my 2 salmon tail catfish looked extremly sick. One was lying motionless upside down on the bottom of the aquarium the other was lying on its side 'breathing' heavily, both were extremly pale instead of their normal black. I quickly got another aerater and with my sisters help had the bubbles running right next to them . The one that was upside down didn't make any movement for 20 mins and I had picked it up and moved it around to see if water moving over the gills made any difference but it still didn't move. I took him out of the water and put on on the floor to see if made any little movements whatsoever but he didn't, so i wrapped him up in a paper towel that ended up getting wet. The other fella after having the bubble on him for about 20 mins was starting to move around and was 'breathing' a little easier. I went to show my mum that my poor fish had died and when I took off the paper towel she exclaimed that it was trying to 'breath' so I quickly rushed to the aquarium and put him in the water and had the aerater on him. I was so incredibly surprised as he hadn't moved at all for 30 mins and would have been out of water for about 10 mins. The other fish had some colour back and I could see some blood coming back to the 'dead' fishes fins and tail and he was 'breathing'. Both kept on getting better throughout the night and this morning both were back to their normal black colour. They didn't eat today and the fish that was 'dead' seems to have some sort of spasm or something but I hope it will go away and that they'll eat toomorrow. They are really incredibly fish and I kind of have a new respect for them. None of our other fish were affected in any way by the black out, the other fish in the tank: 2 three spot gouramis, 2 angelfish and 1 sucker loach, were perfectly fine and in our 4ft tank which probably has about 100 fish or more in it( the guppies and bristle nose are amazing breeders), most of which are small babies, were like the others perfectly fine.

Had a look around today to see the damage around the area, e end of the street someone had a large branch fallen in front of there house from a large gum tree, up the road a medium size ironbark had broken in half half way up. Small branches and green leaves were everywhere. The local pub had some of its roof ripped off. Just up from our place almost every tree had branches broken off, lots and lots of trees had split in half or had large branches ripped off, on the foot paths pile and piles of branches were piled up. They had it on the news aswell and a few people lost all or part of their roofs, one place had a large tree just in front of the house fall away from the house and not on the house which was incredibly lucky for them, one guy had a caravan the was totaly destroyed by a mini tornado and from the news it showed that we were the only town hit. Seeing all this showed me how really lucky we were that nothing happened to us.

Sorry for going on for ages but haven't had anything like this happen before and it really was quite exciting. Anybody been through any really bad storms and have some stories? Also does anybody know if you can do anything about aerating a tank during a blackout?
 
Now you need to take a walk around the area and get yourself a great collection of branches for you're enclosures :)
The gouramis wouldn't have worried as much about the loss of air as the other fish as they are Labyrinth fish, the FF you would have a hard time killing with a spear gun as I would normally say about the Salmon Cats but maybe he was just allergic to paper towel? I have heard this about a few fish.
Anyway, glad no one was hurt and I wish you well with the clean up :)
 
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