Flooding causes havoc as wild weather hits Oz

Queenslanders were yesterday bearing the brunt of some of the heaviest rain Australia has had in months, while thousands of people on New South Wales’ south coast were without power and evacuees in Victoria were unsure whether their homes survived another night of fires.

In Queensland’s southeast, roads were cut off, theme parks closed and residents took to the flooded streets by boat after a month’s worth of rain fell in parts overnight Friday.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Kimba Wong said the thunderstorms were a “one-in-100-year event”.

“The highest total that we have recorded is 330 millimetres at Loder Creek on the Gold Coast, so some very heavy rainfall there,” Wong told ABC.

“We did have an emergency warning in place for that rainfall because we had some reports of flash flooding in some locations and in some locations it was a one-in-100-year event.”

Queensland and New South Wales were revelling in the downpour, which has helped to ease conditions in some NSW fire grounds and provided relief to drought-stricken areas. However, more than 2000 homes were without power in the state’s south coast region after months of fires have devastated the area.

And in Victoria, the wet weather did little to ease the fire threat. Residents

in the state’s northeast endured an anxious wait after they were evacuated homes once again.

Data from Google has revealed the nation’s bush fire crisis has captured the attention of Australians more than any other news event in the past decade, eclipsing the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the downing of flight MH370 and the 2016 US presidential election.