Mr Noah, we need your ark.

Well the weather has turned slightly nasty.  We had a tropical cyclone roaming round up north for a few days, and then it lost some of its intensity and became an ex-tropical cyclone. But instead of dying out, as these things are want to do, it has gained strength from the warm air around Australia and the moisture over the Coral Sea and although it hasn’t become a cyclone again, it is dragging warm moist air in from the ocean and dumping it on the coast.

Gladstone has been badly affected and Bundaberg is flooding badly now and is going to get much worse. These are times when the Bureau of Metorology site is kept open much of the time. Knowing what is going on is really important. Also, the local national radion station, the ABC, instead of having a national program has only local programs with constant news of the flooding along the coast.

This is the current warning list for Queensland. Pretty extensive.

Warnings current:

Ocean Wind Warning 1 (QLD),

Coastal Wind Warning 1 - East Coast (QLD),

Severe Weather Warning 1,

Severe Weather Warning 2,

Fire Weather Warning,

Severe Thunderstorm Warning (QLD),

Flood Warning - Fitzroy River (QLD),

Flood Warning - Burnett River (QLD),

Flood Warning - Kolan, Baffle, Boyne and Calliope Rivers (QLD),

Flood Warning - Coastal Rivers - South (QLD),

Flood Warning - Burrum River (QLD),

Flood Warning - Mary River (QLD),

Flood Warning - Sunshine Coast Rivers (QLD),

Flood Warning - Stanley & Brisbane above Wivenhoe Dam (QLD),

Flood Warning - Lockyer, Bremer, Warrill & Brisbane below Wivenhoe (QLD),

Flood Warning - Condamine-Balonne Rivers (QLD),

Flood Warning - Macintyre, Weir & Border Rivers (QLD),

Flood Warning Summary (QLD).

 This ‘weather event’ as they are calling it, has turned into a bad affair, with inches of rain falling right down the coast and causing serious flooding.

Big seas are pounding the coast.

  

 

 The Maranoa River breaks it banks at Mitchell, causing the worst flooding in the town's history. Picture: courtesy of Maranoa Regional Council Source: The Courier-Mail

 Here on the Gold Coast, our house sit is well above any flood level, if we flood then the rest of the city is under water, we are at the base of Mount Tamborine and in a slightly hilly area. We have also taken note of all the radio and television advice to get the house storm ready. So we are expecting lots more rain today and much higher winds.

Some places have had over 500 mils of rain in the last couple of days. That is half a meter! The run off from that is enormous. Also because of the low pressure there are storm surges working their way down the coast giving very high tides. The strong winds, averaging around 80 to 100 km an hour at their peaks are driving big seas too, so the beaches are having problems with erosion.



A flooded property at Lowmead north of Bundaberg. It later disappeared under floodwaters. PIC: Supplied


Here on the Gold Coast, so far we have only had about 100 mils, around 4 inches, but we expect the worst to be this afternoon and tonight.

Bagara, around Bundaberg has had tornados, power cuts are everywhere, and everyone is told to keep off the roads. The winds further north, around Gympie are still cyclonic, and that seems to be heading our way.

 

To give you an idea of how high these rivers get, many bridges will be underwater, and the rivers can be 5, 10, or 20 meters higher than normal.

“The Burnett River at Walla is currently around 22 metres, which is above the December 2010 flood (20.10 metres). A peak slightly above 22 metres is expected in the next few hours due to local runoff, with further rises expected during Monday and Tuesday.”  BOM site. To complicate matters, all the local dams are releasing water because they know there will be much more water flowing in over the next week or so.

So we are expecting a rather wild 24 hours to come. I'll keep you posted. Just in the last few minutes the rain has increa