Cities submerged, at least 10 dead in Australian floods

Storms began at the Queensland town of Gympie on Feb. 22. They drenched coastal towns on the way to the city of Brisbane, which received 80 percent of its typical annual rainfall in three days.

Brisbane registered 24.1 inches of rain between Friday and Sunday, breaking its three-day rainfall record of 23.6 inches from 1974. In the past week, it has received 31.2 inches — six times the amounts it typically sees during the entire month of February.

Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczu described the event as a “rain bomb.”

The nation has been living under the La Niña weather pattern since November. It’s predicted to ease over the coming months. La Niña ushered in a wetter, cooler summer in northern and eastern Australia (it contributes to dry conditions in southwest Australia; Perth is seeing its driest summer in eight years). The pattern, which originates with cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean, causes a cool, wet winter in the northern United States and a warmer, drier one in the southern part of the country.

In a climate outlook released Tuesday, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said climate change continues to affect the country, including with increased rainfall during the wet season between October and April and a “greater proportion of rainfall from high-intensity short-duration rainfall events.”

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Kelley Sheenan, editor in chief of Peppermint, watched social media helplessly at home with her coronavirus-positive son as water encroached on the magazine’s Brisbane office. She rushed to the office alone in the middle of the night to carry computers one by one through ankle-deep water to her car.

“I could feel the water getting higher on my legs each time, so I knew I had to stop as it was getting too scary,” she said.

“From what I can see, the water is almost at the roof, so I don’t think anything will be salvageable,” she said. “It doesn’t seem real.”

As the flooding moved to her home, she said, she was told she shouldn’t go to an evacuation center because her son had covid-19. She was told instead to call hospitals. She decided to move everything to the second story and wait it out, hoping for the best, until water levels receded.

In typical Aussie fashion, some residents took advantage of the conditions for unusual sports. A Sunshine Coast bicycle rider was seen tearing through the floodwaters towing a child on a surfboard, and a swimmer was filmed completing a freestyle lap in a submerged football field. Elsewhere, world champion surfer Mick Fanning gave a pharmacist a lift on a Jet Ski between two towns so she could distribute medication.

On Monday, the severe weather hit the city of Lismore in New South Wales, where it turned downtown blocks into swimming pools.

Harrison Eyre, 20, a student, was one of many residents who took to flooded streets in “tinnies” — small aluminum boats — to assist. He said he helped perform about 20 rescues Monday, including navigating the boat between cabins at a holiday park to reach an older woman waiting on top of a permanent trailer. He climbed onto a roof to save a Dachshund dog and watched helicopters use winches to pull people from rooftops.

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“At some places, the water was over the top of roofs of double-story houses,” he said. “The State Emergency Service put a call out to all people with boats in the area to do what they could — get in the water and try and find people.”

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet on Tuesday called the disaster an “unprecedented event” beyond the scale of previous floods.

Dan Clark, 36, a Little League coach, was reeling knowing that the Lismore baseball field was under several feet of water after expensive renovations had just been completed. He said he spent Monday “holding my breath and waiting by the phone” for news of friends and family waiting on their roofs.

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He has lived in the region, which is prone to flooding, all his life. He said previous events were “not even close” to the record-breaking water levels he saw Monday.

The meteorology bureau warned Tuesday that the same region of Queensland was likely to be hit by severe thunderstorms with large hailstones, damaging winds and more heavy rainfall in the second half of the week. In New South Wales, the bureau predicted, the rainstorm would continue south with flash flooding possible in Sydney, coastal regions and as far as Victoria — the southernmost state on the east coast.

In addition to the La Nina pattern, which has boosted rainfall, WeatherZone, an Australia-based weather company, blamed the torrents on a pool of cold air at high altitudes that transited the eastern part of the country, destabilizing the atmosphere. Moisture flow into the region was further enhanced by a zone of low pressure near the coast, WeatherZone wrote.

The storm system lingered unusually long over the region due to a zone of high pressure near New Zealand, which blocked it from progressing. This high-pressure zone remains in place, according to the WeatherZone, which will prolong the unsettled conditions in eastern Australia.

The excessive and, in some cases, record-setting rainfall is the type of event that is expected to become more frequent in a warming climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects heavy precipitation events will increase 7 percent for every 1.8 degrees (1 Celsius) of warming over the coming decades.

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The event follows deadly flooding which has occurred in recent weeks in Brazil and Madagascar.

Jason Samenow reported from Washington.