The storm began in the city of Jimmy in Queensland on February 22. They flooded coastal towns on the way to Brisbane, which received 80 percent of the typical annual rainfall in three days.
Brisbane recorded 26.6 inches of rain from Friday to Sunday, breaking its three-day record of 23.6 inches from 1974. In the last week, it received 31.2 inches – six times the amount it usually sees throughout February.
The nation has been living under the La Niña model since November. He is expected to lose weight in the coming months. La Niña introduced wetter, cooler summers in northern and eastern Australia (this contributed to the dry conditions in southwestern Australia; Perth is seeing its driest summer in eight years). The pattern, which stems from cyclical changes in the Pacific, is causing cold, wet winters in the northern United States and warmer and drier winters in the south.
In a climate forecast released on Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said climate change continued to affect the country, including increased rainfall during the wet season from October to April and “more rainfall from high-intensity short-term rainfall”.
Kelly Shinan, Peppermint’s editor-in-chief, helplessly watched social media at home with her coronavirus-positive son as water flooded the Brisbane magazine’s office. She rushed to the office alone in the middle of the night to carry the computers one by one through ankle-deep water to her car.
“Every time I felt the water rise on my feet, I knew I had to stop because it was getting too scary,” she said.
“From what I see, the water is almost to the roof, so I don’t think anything will be saved,” she said. “It doesn’t look real.”
As the flood moved to her home, she said, she was told not to go to an evacuation center because her son was suffering from covid-19. Instead, she was told to call hospitals. She decided to move everything to the second floor and wait for it, hoping for the best until the water levels dropped.
Heavy weather hit the town of Lismore in New South Wales on Monday, turning neighborhoods into swimming pools.
Harrison Air, a 20-year-old student, was one of many residents who took to the flooded streets in “tin cans” – small aluminum boats – to help. He said he helped with about 20 rescues on Monday, including navigating the boat between cabins in a holiday park to reach an older woman waiting on top of a permanent trailer. He climbed to the roof to save the dachshund and watched as helicopters used winches to pull people off the rooftops.
“In some places, the water was over the roofs of two-story houses,” he said. “The State Emergency Service has called on all people in boats in the area to do what they can – go into the water and try to find people.
New South Wales Prime Minister Dominique Perotte on Tuesday called the disaster an “unprecedented event” beyond the scale of previous floods.
Little Clark coach Dan Clark, 36, shuddered to learn that Lismore’s baseball field was a few feet below water after expensive renovations had just been completed. He said he spent Monday “holding his breath and waiting on the phone” for news of friends and family waiting on their rooftops.
All his life he lived in the area prone to floods. He said previous events were “not even close” to the record water levels he saw on Monday.
The Meteorological Bureau warned on Tuesday that the same region of Queensland is likely to be hit by strong thunderstorms with heavy hail, destructive winds and heavier rainfall in the second half of the week. In New South Wales, the bureau predicts, the rainstorm will continue south with possible flash floods in Sydney, the coastal regions and all the way to Victoria, the southernmost state on the east coast.
In addition to the La Niña model, which increased rainfall, WeatherZone, an Australian-based meteorological company, blamed the floods in the high-altitude cold pool, which runs through the east of the country, destabilizing the atmosphere. The flow of moisture in the region was further enhanced by a low pressure zone near the coast, writes WeatherZone.
The turbulent system lingered unusually long over the region due to a high-pressure zone near New Zealand that blocked it from progress. This high-pressure zone remains in place, according to WeatherZone, which will prolong unsettled conditions in Eastern Australia.
Excessive and in some cases record rainfall is the type of event that is expected to occur more frequently in warming climates. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that heavy rainfall will increase by 7 percent for every 1.8 degrees (1 Celsius) warming in the coming decades.
The event was followed by deadly floods in recent weeks in Brazil and Madagascar.
Samonov announced from Washington.