Heavy rain and flood risk continues for Queensland

Australian Community Media

The heatwave has broken and in its wake has come flood warnings!

Transcript

00:00Heavy rain and the risk of flooding across much of northern and central Queensland over the next

00:04few days, with southeast Queensland in for a repeat of wet weather today as well. We can see

00:10that we are expecting fairly scattered showers and thunderstorms across much of northern and

00:15eastern Queensland today. That is likely to start clearing from the southeast as we go into this

00:21evening though, as a southeasterly surge pushes up from New South Wales, bringing out drier and

00:27notably fresher winds. That means showers will start clearing from those southeastern areas

00:32while continuing in parts further to the north. Now our rainfall totals out until six o'clock

00:38tomorrow morning do show that we are still expecting fairly widespread 30 to 60 millimetre

00:43totals across northern and eastern Queensland over that period, but we do see some locally

00:49higher falls at risk as well. Now over the past few days, thunderstorms have delivered locally

00:54higher falls in excess of 100 millimetres to much of eastern and southeastern Queensland.

00:58The same is a possibility today with any thunderstorms that do develop, we could see those

01:03higher falls. Now thunderstorms today are possible across most of Queensland, these green areas you

01:09see on our thunderstorm outlook map, but we have a couple of areas marked in yellow showing us where

01:15severe thunderstorms are possible. That includes the far northernmost parts of Cape York Peninsula,

01:20as well as parts of the east coast extending from Townsville down to the New South Wales border

01:25and covering some of those adjacent inland areas as well. Now in those areas storms are most likely

01:30to tap into that tropical moisture and deliver the heavier rainfall that could lead to flash flooding.

01:37These impacts we've already seen over the past few days and we could see them again in those eastern

01:41and southeastern areas in particular. The flooding leading to inundation of homes, properties and

01:46agricultural land, water moving over roads leading to road closures and dangerous driving conditions

01:52and of course damage to infrastructure with so much water moving through. So how will things play

01:57out from tomorrow morning? Moving on to, this is from 6am Thursday, we can see this drier air pushing

02:06up across the southeast, but the wet weather persists across those northern and central parts

02:11of the coast. We're going to see moisture being dragged in towards the north tropical coast,

02:16really a focal point for the rain from tomorrow. We also see a tropical low pressure system starting

02:22to develop over the Cape York Peninsula. Now this system has at this stage only a low chance of

02:27becoming a tropical cyclone, but nonetheless it will drag in some stronger winds and increase

02:33moisture around it and around this trough as well, directing it along the coast and enhancing

02:38rainfall totals in those areas. That's likely to occur from Thursday night into Friday as this

02:44system crosses the coast. That's when we're going to see the heaviest rainfall totals. It really will

02:49depend on how quickly this system moves away though as to when we'll see them clearing. At this stage

02:54we are expecting the system to begin moving away from the Queensland coast as we go into late Friday

03:00into Saturday and across the weekend it'll start moving eastwards across the Coral Sea,

03:04but this is only one of several forecast possibilities. If the low is slower to move

03:10off the coast we may see an increased risk of those heavier rainfall totals continuing. If it

03:15moves away faster we're likely to see an earlier clearance in the wettest weather. One way or the

03:21other though, much of northern and central Queensland can expect that continued wet weather

03:26from Friday going into the weekend as well. Now this of course may exacerbate our riverine flooding

03:32situation as well. We have a number of minor flood warnings current across southern inland

03:37Queensland and the southeast with one moderate flood warning for the Mary River catchment.

03:42Catchments are quite saturated across much of Queensland at the moment which means they are

03:46likely to respond quickly to further rainfall moving through those systems. That is why it is

03:52essential to stay up to date via the Bureau's website, the BOM Weather App and via our social

03:57media. Stay safe and we'll catch you in the next update.

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