Bah humbug! I am going to hang washing out on the line this morning, despite the Bureau’s flash flooding warnings because my diligent preparations for yesterday’s forecasted deluge seems to have put a hex on the arrival of the huge east coast low.

For a week now, the forecasters have been issuing dire alerts, urging us to get hay into sheds and move cattle to high ground. I duly grazed out the flats and arranged for the cows to go to the slopes, cranked the dam siphon into action for a day (flooding the swamp paddock in the process), brought in all the loose garden furniture and watched the radar.

A huge storm raged all day in Bass Strait but nothing arrived here. Even the easterly wind faded away to nothing and small puffy clouds arrived from the south-west. Disgusted, I finally drove up the dam wall to turn off the siphon. When I turned to see how much of a mess I’d made of the paddock in the siphon’s path, this is what I saw:

It had snuck up on me

Wheeling around towards the south-east, I was astonished to see it even had its own “twister”!

The finger of doom?

Well, I reckon we’d be lucky to see 3mm in the gauge this morning.

The thinking behind this post is that the more public I go with my disbelief, the more likely the weather gods will shame me. So, please tell everyone you know that Milk Maid Marian says it’s not going to rain today. I dare you!