Weather News

More heavy rain for sodden north QLD

Ben Domensino, Wednesday March 7, 2018 - 14:29 AEDT

Heavy rain will return to Queensland's flood-weary northern tropics during the second half of this week.

Northerly winds loaded with moisture and a couple of low pressure systems will cause widespread rain and storms in northern Queensland during the coming days.

The impending heavy falls will be adding more water into already saturated river catchments and is likely to cause further flooding.

The state's eastern tropical coast has hardly had time to clean up from last weeks flooding falls and could face another 100-200mm of rain during the next 3-4 days.

At this stage it looks like the rain will occur north of Townsville, over the North Tropical Coast and Peninsula Districts. A Flood Watch has been issued for coastal catchments between Ingham and Cooktown.

Cairns Airport had already collected 1147mm of rain so far this year as of 9am on Wednesday. This is more than half of their long-term annual average (1989mm) and makes this their wettest start to a calendar year since 2011.

Townsville has seen more than 400mm of rain in the past two weeks, which is more than a third of its long-term annual average (1128mm).

The Ross River Dam was sitting at 87 per cent of its capacity on Wednesday morning, up from just 15 per cent a fortnight ago and the highest level since 2014.

A large mass of cloud and tropical moisture will also cause heavy rain over central Australia and eastern districts of the NT during the next three days. A flood watch has been issued for a number of catchments in the Territory's western, central and eastern inland.

- Weatherzone

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A very wet weekend for southeast Qld, northeast NSW

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