Weather News

Flooding rain inundates Pilbara

Ben Domensino, Thursday February 9, 2017 - 16:39 AEDT

Parts of Western Australia's Pilbara are underwater today following the heaviest February rain on record.

A tropical low that was moving over land to the southeast of Onslow this morning is causing heavy rain and blustery winds in the northwest corner of Western Australia.

The heaviest rain during the last 24 hours was 211mm at Karratha Airport, which is the heaviest February fall on record and the second heaviest in the site's history.

Flooding has developed in a number of rivers across the Pilbara, with major flooding occurring in the Maitland River earlier today after it rose by five metres overnight.

Wind gusts have so far reached as high as 83km/h at North Island and 82km/h at Solomon Airport.

The low will continue to spread heavy rain and strong winds through the west Pilbara and into the northwest Gascoyne District today, before it moves off the state's west coast later today or on Friday.

A severe weather warning for flash flooding and damaging winds was in place this morning for parts of the west Pilbara and northwest Gascoyne.

Flood Watches and warnings are also in place across the region due to the ongoing risk of riverine flooding.

The latest warnings can be found at: http://www.weatherzone.com.au/warnings.jsp

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2017

Enter a postcode or town name for local weather, or text to search the site. » advanced search

Weather News

» all stories

Generation gone with the wind

13:20 AEST A weeklong stretch of low wind power was broken on Wednesday evening, as a weak cold front marched across southern Australia. The chart below shows that the National Electricity Market (NEM) has endured a weeklong stretch of low wind generation, with wind power providing around 6% of the NEM’s electricity, down from last year’s average of 13.1% (Mon, April 15 to Wed, April 17).