Le Déluge, 2020

uMngeni Municipality in Action 

For what they get in return, property-owning South Africans pay high "rates" (property taxes). Taxes and utilities increase each year. In uMngeni municipality, as in many municipalities throughout the land, infrastructure is not maintained. With subtropical KwaZulu Natal experiencing dramatic summer storms, public roads proliferate potholes that grow bigger, deeper, and more numerous each year. Calls for municipal action are met with tepid inaction.
Along this property's border, uMngeni Municipality is responsibile to maintain two culverts built under a public district road to drain water from a small but active stream. Water from this stream eventually joins the uMngeni River and flows over Howick Falls.

Last year, I carried photos and a letter to the local road works office to express concern about the culverts. Depending on a storm's severity, these quickly reach capacity and roiling water can flood the property's lower lawn and overwhelm the large fish pond.

This photo shows the culvert on the left half-filled with debris but semi-functional. The culvert on the right, however, is completely blocked. Moreover, on the other side of the road, thick vegetation flourishes on a slope that long ago covered any sign of a culvert. 
I asked the road works representative what it took to have a local road maintenance crew clean out the culverts. She said she'd pass my letter and photos to the road crew supervisor.
I expected inaction.
A week later, a bulldozer appeared.
Happily, I showed the driver the problem and left him to work.
He pushed that fallen tree (photo, above) to the other side of the road. His efforts to remove debris from our side of the road instead added to the pile. Then he discovered the bulldozer's scoop couldn't reach the debris. He and his bulldozer departed.
Another weekk passed before I returned to the office and armed with more photos, explained the problem, again. A few days later, the same bulldozer and driver returned. Again, he rearranged debris, rediscovered the scoop couldn't reach, and departed.
***
Climate change is likely exacerbating storms' intensity although I remember calamatious thunder and hail storms way back during my childhood. It's been decades, however, since I experienced a storm like that of Tuesday March 10, 2020.
We'd had several days of high temperatures but no rain, That day, I judged the gathering clouds a godsend. Little did I know that, within an hour, 46mm (about 1.8 inches) of rain and hail would fall.

As the storm blew in, sixth sense triggered me to move my car further into the car port. Plump rain drops fell as I ran  to the gardening shed to move a dozen small potted plants I'd placed on the shed roof. Quickly, I moved them into the recycled chest freezer I use as a cold frame/greenhouse.
I put five pots with yellow-wood tree cuttings and one pot with an aloe vera cutting on the ground in front of the cold frame where, I was sure, they'd  survive heavy rain.
Heavy rain was one thing. A deluge with hail was another category of thing altogther.

This hail stone (left) popped through an open doorway and hit me on the hand. It felt like a hammer blow.

This video clip gives an impression of the storm's intensity.

Photo: Left, the lower lawn after the storm. 

Right, shows the same section of lower lawn the morning after. Section of pond to the right. 

Aerial view of the flooded pond. The stream runs along the back of the property and a pipe diverts water from the stream into the man-made pond. While the entire area is designated wetlands, lack of maintenance by local municipality adds to flooding risk. (Photos: S. Galleymore.)

Après le Déluge

I'd recently added 10 young goldfish to the pond. Goldfish, of course, are not native to KwaZulu Natal, and, concerned that I not invade KZN rivers with exotics, I consulted with a fish expert. He assured me there's not much chance of a goldfish invasion for, he said, "this type of fish will die or be preyed upon before they'd become invasive". Nevertheless, I buttressed the pond outlet with a fine wire mesh so that, under normal conditions, goldfish couldn't escape or be washed away.

Mirphy's Law: "Anyhting that can go wrong, will go wrong." 

I watched the rain and hail come down and the pond water rise and I prayed the goldfish would not be washed away. Alas, my prayers went unanswered.
The next morning, I found this little fella about 25 meters from the pond.

For the three weeks since I'd added the fish, I'd kept an avid eye out for them. Each morning, I scanned the pond for signs the goldfish were thriving. It would have been nice to catch a glimpse, but I wasn't worried: fish shelter under water plants.
It made my day when I saw three flitting around the pool together.

Succulents after hail.

Hail battered the garden. Chopped leaves of all shapes and sizes looked like tossed salad.
The potted yellow-wood and aloe vera cuttings placed on the groundweren't as robust as I'd thought. Flooding water slid the freezer/cold frame off its foundation and it flipped over onto the pots. The yellow-wood cuttings survived, albeit squashed. The pot that held the aloe vera survived, but the cutting disappeared. It may have tangled with the plant debris that collected about a foot high against the garden fence, but I not seen the cutting since before the storm.
I saw not a single goldfish fin for four days.
Native fish fared well. Frogs were unaffected. Lesson learned: native critters may not be as captivating as exotics but they're better suited to local conditions.
Then, at last, one apparently happy goldfish flitted through the pond.

Since that first sighting, I've seen another goldfish (or other goldfish -- hard to tell if one fish survived or if nine more are in the pond somewhere.

Five days after the terrific storm, the lower lawn and the pond are returning to normal.