Cyclone fears for north as monsoon set to hit

NORTH Queensland faces a possible double whammy of two tropical cyclones off the coast with parts of the inland awash in a wide brown sea.

Highways, roads and rail lines are cut by floodwaters and bush towns are isolated after a record-breaking deluge in the state’s parched northwest.

Forecasters predict a “low” likelihood of cyclonic threat in both the Gulf and Coral Sea in the coming week from intensifying monsoonal activity off Cape York.

“We’ve got a few different scenarios,’’ meteorologist Andrew Bufalino said.

“With the monsoon trough there is that increased possibility of tropical lows developing into cyclones, but the main message is that monsoonal burst.

“It’ll develop with torrential rain over the Cape, Cairns and as far as Townsville later this week.”

It comes as the deep tropical low system anchored over the interior, which has delivered life-giving rainfall totals, slowly drifts north tomorrow.

Julia Creek, Richmond, Hughenden, Cloncurry, McKinlay and Winton all have widespread flooding after seven years of drought in many districts.

“We’ve gone from staring down the barrel of one of the worst droughts in living memory, to today, where some places have got their average annual rainfall almost overnight,’’ prominent north-west Queensland grazier Sam Daniels said.

“It is absolutely unbelievable and bloody beautiful.’’

Cattle baron Peter Hughes, whose family-owned pastoral company has 2.7 million hectares in Queensland and the Northern Territory, said it had been a highly unusual weather event. “It’s great to see so many getting wet,’’ the Nebo-based grazier said. “But there’s still a lot of dry places, and not much went west of Mount Isa into the Channel Country or Boulia.”

The system is expected to move towards the Northern Territory tomorrow with areas of heavy rain likely to continue as part of it.

Weather stations near Winton received 60mm of rain yesterday in just 4.6 hours.

WITH THE MONSOON TROUGH THERE IS THAT INCREASED POSSIBILITY OF TROPICAL LOWS DEVELOPING INTO CYCLONES