Monsoon through could bring heavy rain, flash flooding

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Queensland is on alert as a Monsoon trough over northern Australia has begun to dump heavy rain over the far north. Meanwhile the bureau has forecast intense rainfall in the south-east to continue into the summer season.

Transcript

00:00 Well, the wet season is well and truly upon us here in Queensland, not only for the far

00:06 north as we've seen, but also here in the southeast.

00:09 As you can probably see behind me, Brisbane has had consistent rainfall over the last

00:13 few days and that's actually forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology to continue right through

00:17 until next week, not only for the south, but also for central and western parts of the

00:22 state.

00:23 That intense localised and heavy rainfall is actually largely due to a humid air mass

00:28 that's sitting over the region.

00:30 That's triggering showers and thunderstorms that are forecast to continue.

00:34 We did see some of the effects of that on Tuesday in the Ipswich area.

00:38 In Springfield they recorded 131 millimetres of rainfall within a three hour period.

00:44 Now the main concern for that is while it's not actually a lot of rainfall, it is for

00:48 already saturated and sodden ground and that's something that's a concern not only here in

00:52 the southeast, but also in the far north where they're predicted to see anywhere between

00:56 200 and 400 millimetres of rain over the next few days.

01:00 Across Queensland the storage capacity for dams is also sitting at about 70 per cent,

01:05 but several dams have already begun spilling from the rainfall that we've received over

01:10 the last month or so, including the Hinns Dam on the Gold Coast which is sitting at

01:14 capacity at 100.3 per cent and already spilling.

01:18 We did hear from Senator Murray Watt who has said and warned that we could see these compounding

01:23 weather events continue more frequently into the future.

01:27 You don't want to see these kind of compounding events but unfortunately that's something

01:30 that we're seeing more often in Australia these days is not just one event that happens

01:35 out of the blue, but a particular area being hit by compounding events in similar weeks

01:39 or similar months.

01:41 Even look at what happened in Victoria this week where we had the same areas that were

01:44 hit by floods 18 months ago hit again.

01:47 This is a new reality that we're having to adjust to and of course I think we all feel

01:51 for people who are going through these situations.

01:53 A huge clean-up effort is underway here in the South East for the Gold Coast, Scenic

01:57 Rim and Logan areas as they continue to pick up the pieces after they had severe thunderstorms

02:03 lash the region over the Christmas holiday period.

02:07 Work is being done to remove trees as well as clear debris from roads.

02:11 The main concern is the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting that we can expect more of

02:16 those severe thunderstorms continue throughout this summer season.

02:20 So again a lot of wild weather on the cards for Queensland in the outlook ahead for this summer.

02:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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