Cyclone hits Balule Reserve

The river behind our waterhole after approx. 175 mm of rain had fallen.

Out here in the bush rain is always welcome and so far this summer we had had 295 mm since the start of October, that is until Tuesday 17^th and Wednesday 18^th January, earlier this week.  It began raining on Tuesday and by 4.30 p.m. only 18mm had fallen.  Over the next 24 hours, however, a further 262 mm (10 inches) fell.  

The same river some 500 m upstream

As a result our normally dry river beds became raging torrents, audible even over the sound of the rain.  The largest river on the main road to the reserve gate was 40 m wide.  In the midst of this most of the local lion pride were in the area, on our neighbours’ property and here on Leopard’s View.  We even had to deliberately let water out of the splashpool at various intervals.  Luckily we have suffered only from erosion of paths and roads although we did have a mini-river flowing through one of the huts as the ground became saturated.  Giraffe Hut is now drying out and we have dug out around it to create better run-off management in the future – pictures to follow as the work progresses.

The main road through the reserve to the gate, Wednesday morning

At a stroke our rainfall total for this wet season has jumped up to 575 mm, which is 125 mm more than the annual average for Balule.

Afternoon of Thursday 19th - our river much subsided

All roads in and out of the reserve were impassable until the middle of Thursday 19^th and some routes are still closed.

The main road river shown above, 24 hours after the rain stopped

Our local town, Hoedspruit, which is 21 km away, was cut off by flood water and was declared a disaster area: some sections were completely under water.  Many major roads and bridges in the area have been damaged and the Olifants River came over the top of the high-water bridge.  The local Air Force base was active in the area, rescuing many people trapped by rising water.

Clean-up operations are in progress everywhere.  We hope that the cyclones now building in the Indian Ocean will not affect us this far inland over the next week or so.  With soils already saturated more heavy rain would undoubtedly lead to renewed flooding.