|
 Torrential
rain on QLD North Coast
An area of torrential rain, showers and embedded thunderstorms moved
north up the QLD North Coast late yesterday and today. A line
of storms developed yesterday morning several hundred kilometres east of,
and
parallel to, the coast from the northern Cape York Peninsula to around Ayr.
In a strong southeasterly stream, these drifted northwest onto the coast
where a tongue of upper cold air lying up the coast combined with orographic
uplift from the mountain ranges just inland to bring heavy
ralls. Alva Beach, 15km NE of Ayr, recorded 62mm between 9am and 3pm yesterday,
while Ingham recorded 40mm between 3pm and 9pm. The heaviest rain fell around
Lucinda, 20km NE of Ingham, in the early hours of this morning. Lucinda Point
AWS recorded 75mm between midnight and 3am, 64.8mm falling in the hour to
2.40am. Lucinda Point's 24-hour total to 9am was 161.6mm, a March record
for the 12-year-old station, but Lucinda PO, only 2km away, recorded a massive
280.4mm. Gairloch, about 5km
N of Ingham,
recorded 185mm for the 24 hours. Today, Lockhart River Airport on Cape York
Peninsula, 500km NW of Cairns, recorded 99mm betweeen 9am and 3pm.
Storm
blacks out Katherine NT
A storm which brought down powerlines and crushed a car under a tree south
of Katherine overnight also cut power to the town for four hours.
Heavy
storm falls in NW NSW
Instability from a surface trough over inland NSW combined with areas
of thicker cloud moving SE with an upper jet stream today to produce isolated
heavy storms
in
the state's northwest this morning and again this evening. The rain
was heavy enough to block the Newell Highway north of Moree to all but heavy
vehicles until Sunday morning. Collarenebri recorded 56.4mm for the 24 hours
to 9am and Burren Junction, 70km
to the southeast,
53.0mm. Moree Airport recorded 21.8mm in 38 minutes to 9.51am of which 6.6mm
fell in 4 minutes. Another storm gave the airport 32.6mm in 30 minutes to 7pm,
while Coonamble Airport recorded 35mm in an early evening storm that dumped
18.8mm in 8 minutes while the wind gusted to 109km/h. Croppa Creek, 60km NE
of Moree, recorded 130.2mm for the 24 hours to 9am Saturday. Other heavy NSW
totals for this period are
given here. |
