A bunch of latest rainfall records have been set throughout the excessive flood occasion in Queensland and NSW from February 22 to March 9, with greater than 50 websites recording over a metre of rainfall in per week, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says.
The Bureau’s newest Particular Local weather Assertion dramatically paints an image in numbers of the devastating and lethal floods, which got here with file insured losses invoice of greater than $3.4 billion.
The extreme and sustained rainfall led to flooding from Maryborough in Queensland right down to Grafton in NSW. Many areas acquired greater than half their common annual rainfall complete in only a week.
Throughout southeast Queensland and northeast NSW, rainfall within the final week of February was as much as 5 occasions the month-to-month common to be “the wettest week since not less than 1900” for big areas, BOM says.
The Mary River at Gympie recorded its highest flood peak since 1893, hitting a peak of twenty-two.96 metres, and there was main riverine flooding within the Sunshine Coast area, and Brisbane, Logan and Albert River catchments. In components of northeast NSW, peak flood ranges broke earlier records, relationship again greater than 100 years in some areas, by “appreciable margins”.
BOM says in latest a long time, there was a development in the direction of a higher proportion of high-intensity, short-duration rainfall occasions, leaping 10% in some areas, particularly in northern Australia.
“Because the local weather warms, heavy rainfall occasions are anticipated to proceed to grow to be extra intense,” the assertion mentioned. “A hotter environment can maintain extra water vapor than a cooler environment, and this relationship alone can enhance moisture within the environment by 7% per 1 diploma Celsius of worldwide warming.”
Elevated atmospheric moisture may also present extra vitality for some processes that generate excessive rainfall occasions.
On February 28, NSW’s Lismore suffered devastating flooding because the Wilsons River hit a file 14.4 metres, exceeding the previous file peak set in 1954 by over two metres, and Coraki and Woodburn on the Richmond River and Murwillumbah and Tumbulgum on the Tweed River have been additionally inundated.
The Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment recorded its wettest two-week interval since records began in 1900, whereas the decrease Logan River noticed the worst flooding since January 1974 – topping that attributable to ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie in March 2017.
Following two years of La Niña situations, the rain fell on catchments that have been already moist and shortly turned saturated.
Many rainfall records have been set throughout higher Brisbane, the place the town gauge recorded 792.9 mm in six days – 78% of the annual common. The best every day complete set a file of 228.4 mm and there have been three consecutive days with totals over 200mm.
“The Brisbane metropolis gauge set records for all intervals from three to seven days,” BOM mentioned.
There have been a number of floods alongside the Brisbane River and Australia’s highest every day rainfall complete of 907mm was set at Crohamhurst. The Brisbane Metropolis gauge recorded 887 mm within the month of February, solely behind 1025.9 mm in the identical month in 1893.
“Averaged over the Brisbane River catchment, the rainfall within the final week of February was the very best on file (since 1900) for all intervals from one to seven days, exceeding totals throughout the January 1974 floods,” BOM mentioned.
The best verified seven-day rainfall complete for southeast Queensland was 1334mm at Higher Springbrook Alert, a gauge within the flood warning community.
The Northern Rivers area in north-east NSW additionally broke many records. Fourteen-day rainfall records have been set on the Hawkesbury-Nepean, Higher Nepean, Georges-Sydney Coast and Wollongong Coast catchments “by substantial margins”.
“The person every day rainfall totals have been vital in some areas, however it was the multi-day and multi-week nature of the extraordinary rainfall that had the best impacts,’ BOM mentioned.
By March 9, Sydney’s Observatory Hill had recorded 872.4mm of rain since the beginning of 2022 — the wettest begin to a yr since these records started in 1859.
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