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I think you should reconsider the physics in play in the situation. The situation is one of change of Momentum. Just think about trying to land an airplane with a 90 degree crosswind. The faster the windspeed, the greater the momentum of the airmass, since the value of the momentum of an object is the product of its mass and velocity. The airplane has momentum also. The Law of Conservation of Momentum states that the total of a system, here the airmass and the airplane, remains constant. To calculate the momentum of floodwaters yoiu would need to know the flow rate past a reference point in litres per unit time, and the speed of flow in metres per unit time. I can't quote figures off the top of my head, but use your imagination to distinguish between a lot of water moving fast and a small amount of water moving slowly. You can do it becasue you have experienced it every time you take a shower or fill a bathtub. If you consider the case where a lot of water is moving quickly, you can soon see that the water provides the greatest amount of momentum to the water/vehicle system. Therefore, the water is going to change teh vehicle's momentum more than the vehicle will change the water's. Just think of the situation of a grasshopper hitting the windscreen of a B-Double. So, if the vehicle is moving slowly, it has less momentum and will be affected more by teh water. That's why we often hear that a vehicle was swept away afte stalling in the floodwater.

Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in Top Gun, a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s Picket Fences or the doomed captain of Alien, has died. He was 93. Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement.

In NSW, when I was doing Crash Investigation as a specialist, the offence was called Culpable Driving. One of the elements was 'impact' - easily proved. Other elements were things like dangerous driving or driving while intoxicated by alchol or other drug. Even negligence through poor vehicle maintenance, or fatigue could be raised as elements. This offence was introduced in place of manslaughter since the public perceived those elements not to reach the higher standard of manslaughter. If however, the cause of the impact is due to really terrible actions, such as evading arest, or using the vehicle as a weapon, then manslughter is appropriate. I believe that knowingly driving into floodwaters is a premeditated act. There has been enough publicity of the outcomes for a reasonable person to know such an act is highly dangerous. The level of danger is akin to driving past a red traffic light to pass across an intersecting road. Sure, disobeying a traffic control light signal is an offence against the Regulations, but the Regulation is there to make using the road safer for all. Perhpas you think me overly harsh in calling for a charge of manslaughter in such cases. Let's at least agree that the road rules should include a prohibition of driving into floodwaters. First, let's get a law to protect others, then we can argue the toss about an appropriate penalty.

Finally getting a bit of a break from the rain, just bits of drizzle today. All up since Sunday night 380mm or over 15 inches in the old scale. Photo is the valley flooded below my place, taken from my front yard. The water is up to the neighbour's house which is just across the street from my front gate.

You've backed me up! Yes. Under normal circumstances there are many places where flowing water can be crossed - when the water volume is small and the flow rate is small. But you can't tell me that a watercourse holding rapidly moving flood water is a normal situation. If it was 'normal', you would not be seeing images of it on TV newscasts. Watercourses are lower than surrounding ground. Why not sit out the flooding? Better to arrive late, than dead on time. I don't see a lot of these incidents being ones involving locals evacuating homes. More often it seems the victim is trying to push a big duel-cab ute across a watercourse - because the victim has seen his make of vehicle doing so in a TV ad. My point is that by entering floodwaters, one is either suicidal, homicidal if being accompanied by others, or oblivious to the safety of those seeking to effect a rescue.

Neither appears to see a problem with killing people. Nev

So, to Trump and his Isreali mate, it's not a case of war halting elections. It's a case of elections halting wars. How sick is it that both these war criminals have decided to scale down their military actions until the elections which may or may not keep them in power are held?

I reckon that it should be made illegal to drive a motor vehicle into flowing water. Just look at the news from Queensland of the number of rescues of people who had driven into fast flowing water. The example I saw only involved the driver, but how many time in recent years have we heard of both driver and passenger being drowned? Not only the lives of the vehicle occupants, but the lives of the rescuers are put at risk. I believe that the death of a passenger after a driver drives into flowing water should be dealt with as Involuntary Manslaughter. This is a homicide where there is no intention to kill, resulting instead from criminal negligence or an unlawful and dangerous act where a reasonable person would realize the act exposes someone to a risk of serious injury. Am I being too harsh? I think that through the publicity of the results of driving into flowing water, a normal person should know that such an act is dangerous. Harming another person by an act that is dangerous is accepted as being wrong. We know that the Law evolves to deal with new situations. This practice of driving vehicles into flowing water is one of those new situations.

I've ridden a bike in Indonesia but I certainly wouldn't attempt it now; it's only for the brave or foolish. Some wild unofficial road rules there. Vehicles play a game of chicken pulling out to pass. Whoever flashes their headlights first has right of way, so the one that loses has to try and squeeze back into the lane or go bush to avoid a head-on. I remember once being in VW Country Buggy and we hit this chook at speed which sent the bird flying in the air. When I looked back it was gone; an old girl had snatched it off the road and was legging it with the dead chook while there were still feathers floating down. Pedestrians have to be as nimble as the motorists in that mayhem. The old mate who was driving the VW was well versed in that type of driving. He was a quantity surveyor for oil projects and spent eleven years driving in Nigeria before getting another two years driving experience in Jakarta. Needless to say, he was always the designated driver.

Sorry to hear of your bad experiences. Sometimes mother nature is a bitch. But when it comes to most of the resulting damage, blame your state governments.... all flavors if them. Tis a sign of poorly designed infrastructure. Design should allow for unusual but expected natural events.

We're up over the twelve inches for the month so far. A good start to BOM's drier than average spring forecast. In this region their long term seasonal forecasts have been totally opposite to reality for the last three years running. If they say drier than average, expect wetter than average and vice versa. Their day to day forecasts are generally fairly accurate.

Pete, you can have all of our thunderstorms if you want them. I hate the things. Flooding, erosion, power outages and infrastructure damage is all we get from them. Some summers we get hammered by them from October through to April. Half the year we're on almost constant disaster watch. I've had big killer bolts smashing trees 30 metres from the house, and sheet lightning making it's way inside the house with pretty blue streaks flashing around the stainless kitchen sink. I once had a blue bolt arc out between the saucepan I was holding and the stove I was about to put it on. Part of my aversion also relates to the traumatic experience of having our house smashed up in a tornado when I was a little kid. My mother and older siblings had to hold down the legs of the table we were sheltering under. I can remember stuff flying everywhere and getting sucked out where the roof once was. It was a struggle for them to hold the table down, the uplift force was that bad. I was too young to help out, all I could do is sit there and howl. So no, I don't like storms. I think another thing that encourages the sheet lightning is a tin roof. It hits the roof and the metal cyclone rods are only 6" below that and the lightning travels down the rods and arcs on any metal it can find.

The ALTERNATIVE could not be more disunited. Nev

Glad someone got some good out of it. One thing I miss from Qld, is the pleasure of watching a real thunderstorm come through. Darwin is also (or only) famous for beautiful towering cu-nim thunderstorms.

Knowing about his sexual behaviour is different from seeing it. Video of their President's corpulent body squashing some reluctant model might change the mind of some of his religious conservative voters

I think that’s very likely but Trump also sees Putin as the gold standard for the type of political leader he wants to be and wants to do business with, and is frustrated by being pushed to impose sanctions instead, and has someone in Zelensky who stubbornly won’t give him what he wants and was responsible for him being impeached.

I seriously think Putin must hold some compromising video on Trump. It's the only thing that could explain his treasonous behaviour.