Storms serve as a warning

RESIDENTS of the Far North and Cairns have witnessed mother nature at her most spectacular, bringing much needed rain to our lawns, gardens, crops and dams.

It’s unusual for Cairns to endure hours of thunder and lightning. It’s common in the south-east corner, as well as in Darwin, but not in the tropical north.

We are used to days and weeks of monsoonal rain, although that has been far from normal in the past few years.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned we were in for some heavy rain but we were not expecting a night of thunder and lightning as well.

The bureau says an upper low is out of the ordinary, a large amount of cooler air in the upper atmosphere, provided instability in the skies.

On Wednesday night the region provided the perfect conditions of a good contrast between the warm surface and the cool atmosphere above.

We had the three main ingredients, including moist air, an unstable atmosphere and a mechanism such as fronts, troughs and regions of low pressure.

The result was widespread outages across the region as the power network was damaged.

Heavy rain swamped the city and beyond, including a high of 269mm at Babinda, the wettest town in Australia. There were crashes and traffic and aviation delays.

Conditions eased yesterday and last night but it serves as a reminder that we need to be be ready for the annual cyclone season, starting next month through to April.

There is no place for complacency after the mild seasons of late.

We need to heed all advice. Nick Dalton Deputy editor