Record monsoon rains hit catchments already topped up by Alfred

Parts of Queensland have been hit with a year’s worth of rain within a few days, leading to widespread flooding in the state’s south-west and northern NSW and creating a vast pulse of water expected to make its way slowly towards Lake Eyre. Flooding at Tenham Station, a beef and sheep enterprise amid the channel country in south-west Queensland. Credit: Joe Tully This year’s monsoon rains have been particularly heavy, and parts of the catchment had already received waters from Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which inundated regions of northern NSW and south-east Queensland earlier in March.

Late on Saturday night an elderly man was swept away from his SUV as he tried to tow a caravan across a flooded causeway at Bretti, about 100 kilometres west of Taree in NSW, after the Barnard River broke its banks. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Jonathan How said the volume of rainfall was significant but not entirely unexpected. “We are in Queensland’s wet season, so we do expect heavy rainfall events at this time of year,” How said.



“However, it’s the sheer intensity of rainfall in such a short period that has made this event particularly severe.” Parts of Queensland had record-breaking rain over the weekend and Premier David Crisafulli warned of widespread flooding. Credit: Joe Tully He said the heavy rain was in line with predictions about the impact of climate change, with high sea-surface temperatures leading to increased evaporation into an atmosphere that can hold more moisture due to increased air temperatures.

“We can’t definitively say that climate change caused this flooding, but the increasing frequency and intensity of short-term rain events align with climate projections,” he said. Sea surface temperatures off North Queensland have also been higher than average this summer, a factor that contributes to increased atmospheric moisture. “Warmer ocean temperatures mean the air can hold more water vapor, leading to heavier rainfall when storms do occur,” How said.

A series of wet years in the 2020s has already had a profound impact on inland deserts, and the pulse of water that will now drain into interior lakes will cause a burst of life from winter to spring and into next summer said Professor Richard Kingsford, a river ecologist and conservation biologist who has worked across the wetlands and rivers of the Murray-Darling and Lake Eyre basin. He said the latest rainfall over catchments already charged with moisture from Alfred, would result in water moving slowly across the wide shallow basin into the interior, prompting a surge in fish and insect life which will attract birds and small mammals. “It is just such a contrast from those dry years.

It’s incredibly green. It’s sometimes deafening with the sounds of insects and the birds, whereas when they’re in one of these dry El Nino phases, you can [look] very hard to find animals that are managing to stay alive.” Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said at the weekend that more than 140 state-controlled roads had been closed, including the Bruce Highway near Bowen, while some regional schools were closed on Monday.

As floodwaters cut roads and isolated communities, many residents were forced to flee on Friday, including the entire town of Avadale, a south-west community of about 30 people. Central Queensland’s Stonehenge, Jundah and Windorah were also hit hard after some areas recorded up to 600 millimetres of rain, almost double the average annual rainfall. “You’ve got somewhere in the order of a million head of cattle, a million sheep who are impacted at the moment, and we could see stock losses into the hundreds of thousands,” Crisafulli said.

“We have to get fodder to try, wherever humanly possible, to keep stock alive. In the longer term, we have to make sure that we can help these communities rebuild.” Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment.

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