I'm Angus here at the Bureau of Meteorology. It is Friday the 13th and this is a Severe Weather Update, as wet weather could lead to flooding across parts of Queensland and New South Wales.
Throughout last night, areas of heavy rain impacted the border area between the two states. We're looking for these bands of yellow in our radar imagery, which mostly affected northern New South Wales yesterday, but at times have affected southern Queensland, particularly in the last 3 to 4 hours.
We've seen some quite heavy falls accumulate on both sides of the state border here, mostly between Byron Bay and Brisbane, and I can put a few of those observations onto the map. This is what we saw in the 24 hours up to 9 a.m. local time Friday morning.
The peak values were in the very far north of New South Wales, with Doon Doon picking up 241mm over that 24 hour period. That is a lot of rainfall. There were a number of other spots in northern New South Wales that weren't far behind, including 182mm at Mullumbimby.
We also have seen some heavy falls on the Queensland side of the border, up to about 120mm in the ranges there, and up to about 96mm on the coastline. But those numbers continue to climb, we are already up to 100mm now at the coast and continuing to accelerate through the course of Friday.
So we've seen heavy rain already, but it hasn't hit everywhere and through the remainder of the day today, further heavy falls are possible across not just south-eastern parts of Queensland, but up into the Wide Bay-Burnett and pushing inland to parts of the Central Highlands and even out towards the western districts. It does look like the south-eastern corner will continue to pick up the heaviest falls, much like we have already seen through the course of the last 24 hours.
And this is our updated warning region just recently updated and extended a little bit to the north, as heavy rain is now expected to push into inland parts of the Wide Bay and Burnett.
So the warning continues across the south-east coast, all the way from Coolangatta here up to somewhere almost as far north as Maryborough And then it pushes inland just to Ipswich down here, but further falls expected up towards Gayndah and almost as far north west as Monto.
In this warning area we're expecting the falls to continue through the remainder of Friday. So far it's mostly been down here, but as we get into the afternoon, the heavy falls will push northwards, potentially through Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and then up into the Wide Bay through the afternoon and evening and into the weekend.
Six hour rainfall totals anywhere in this warning area could be in the 50 to 100mm range, and we're likely to see isolated heavier totals than that up to about 150mm wherever this rain happens to fall the heaviest.
There will be further wet weather as we push out through the weekend as well. This is not a one and done weather event. Saturday will continue to be wet across many of these same areas through eastern and central Queensland as will Sunday, but it does look like the focus will gradually shift over the course of the weekend.
As we saw described in our warning area. The heaviest rain on Friday is down in this region. Once we push into the weekend, it's up through these areas here over inland parts of central and even northern Queensland, where we anticipate those heaviest falls on Saturday and again on Sunday.
So we're really looking at the Central Highlands and Coldfields, parts of the Upper Flinders, parts of the northern Goldfields and even northern parts of the Maranoa-Warrego and eastern parts of the Central West region as seeing the most significant accumulations.
Over the course of the weekend we could see some triple figure numbers out through this area, 100 to 150mm for many places, isolated places getting even higher values than that.
So it will be an extensive wet weather weekend all the way from the north of Queensland down to the south-east.
With all this rain coming in over the next 2 to 3 days, we will see weather impacts primarily in the form of flooding. Flash flooding and riverine flooding remain possible. Flash flooding, of course, when the wet weather is directly overhead and it begins to flood anywhere that rain is heavy. But riverine flooding can occur away from the heavy rainfall as it flows down through the river catchment areas.
Travel and transport delays and extensive road closures are expected across parts of Queensland as this rain builds in through the next 2 to 3 days, and there may be some infrastructure or power issues to contend with. So make sure you are well stocked up at home.
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