Major flooding occurring across the northern rivers of New South Wales
with the severe weather risk heading southwards.
See, the Severe Weather Warnings have been peeled back out of Queensland
as weather settles down there,
the remaining warning in New South Wales is for heavy rainfall,
now this is six hourly totals, up to 200 millimetres with locally intense
rainfall with embedded thunderstorms of up to 300 millimetres an hour.
Now this is likely to lead to flash flooding
and we've seen that in some of the suburbs of the Gold Coast overnight
where accumulations reached up to 300 millimetres.
Damaging winds is a risk within that area
and we have seen
wind gusts around the Byron area approach up to 80 kilometres an hour
and given the sodden nature of the soils, tree failures will be more
likely than usual.
Now having a look at the satellite, you can see the white cloud there
of the IR satellite and the blues and greens with the radar wrapping
in showing that north-easterly feed coming in off the Coral Sea.
Now, if we have a look at the water vapour enhancement, we'll look at to the west,
we can see the cold dry air in the upper atmosphere and the white and brown
and then the moist air coming in off the Coral Sea in the green and white.
Now, the two are trying to mix and as a result,
we're seeing quite a rapid deepening of that coastal trough
which has led to that extreme rainfall overnight in the region.
Now, rain observations, the top performer was Coplicks Bridge in the southern
hinterland of the Gold Coast with up to 358 millimetres falling there
and then over the border at Banora we saw up to 283 millimetres fall.
And since the 3 hours since 9 a.m.
most of the falls have been fairly muted with some onshore flow
around the Hunter Coast
but most of the rainfall is offshore
but as we'll see, that will push back on during the course of today.
Now having a look at the forecast, wind and rain,
we can see that low that's formed has become a major focus
and that focus has really concentrated the weather around it.
But we will see, as the course of the day goes, that activity
picking up along the coast
with quite a bit of activity extending onto the Mid North Coast
but then by Wednesday, retracting probably out of the Northern Tablelands largely
and then we'll see the system drift away to the south-east.
And that's going to be replaced by quite a vigorous southerly
to south southeasterly flow.
So this exposed coast,
largely
south of Port Macquarie, will see a large pick up in shower activity,
cooler conditions there
and those winds also whipping up the waves with lots and lots of wave energy
so looking at hazardous surf for the entirety of the New South Wales
coast, possibly with the inclusion of the Gold Coast and possibly
the eastern Gippsland coast there.
But given this wrap around, we'll see a marked decrease
in the weather over the region during the second half of this week.
Now having a look at the accumulated rainfall,
we can see that low coming in and the accumulations quickly stopping.
So we've seen
in the purple here up to 200 millimetres.
Now this isn't picking up the finer scale stuff that you'd find
within the intense rainfall of up to 300 millimetres,
but it's giving us a good demonstration of where we can expect the rainfall.
So pretty much from Tweed down to the Port Macquarie
area. Now having the flood watches and warnings,
it's a patchwork quilt across the region with the flood watches in blue,
minors and green, moderates in orange and importantly the majors in red.
So we've got the couple of rivers in the Queensland
area of Condamine and the Myall Creek which is affected Dalby.
We've seen flood levels not reach that of 2011
and then also the Bellinger and Orara
down near Graftons and Coffs also a major warning and
a slew of warnings up in the north- east with majors around that Tweed area.
Now we're not expecting the flood level at Lismore to overtop the levee.
However, it still remains in a major flood warning.
We do have the flood sorry, excuse me, the total wave height.
Now this is that low moving down and this is showing the energy on the ocean
and by Friday you can see heights almost getting up
to eight metres of total wave height along that New South Wales coast.
So it's important for marine users to have extra precautions
because it will be quite hazardous as we move right out into the weekend.
This is going to be quite a sustained hazardous surf event for New South Wales.
And it goes without saying, the marine wind warnings seeing strong,
strong winds through Queensland and down to south of Port Macquarie,
unusually we saw gale warnings last night in the Moreton Bay,
which is just highlighting how unusual this event is.
Gale warnings extending from Tweed
down to the Mid North Coast in areas which don't normally see gale warnings.
And then as we move into Wednesday, a broadening of that as that low really
winds up and causes quite a bit of wind to be exposed along that coast.
And that's it from the Bureau.
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And please follow the advice of emergency services.