Australian Flooding

I first heard of this this morning. The Big Picture has this, Australian flooding. "Seasonal flooding across eastern Australia has been widespread and devastating this spring - their wettest on record. Cyclone Tasha came along two weeks ago, and dumped even more water on Queensland. Hundreds of thousands of people in an area the size of France and Germany combined are now affected, and at least nine people have been killed so far. Authorities are working to evacuate some communities and airlift supplies to others as the water level is expected to continue rising over the next two days and 38 regions were declared natural disaster areas. Collected here are photos from the recent flooding around Australia and its effect on residents and animals. (33 photos total)"

I heard the "size of France and Germany" comparison too. That's about 350,000 square miles, making it way bigger than Texas, or 10,000 square miles bigger than the smallest 18 states combined: Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina, Maine, Indiana, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. That's big.