UPDATE:
North Queensland rains trigger BOM special climate statement
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-15/queensland-floods-special-climate-statement/10816184
This was of course just a typical north Queensland ‘Big-Wet’ event. I’ve seen many of them during my life, and they're always extreme events. Especially the epic flooding events during the 1970s, triggered by the then numerous powerful cyclones. And the late 1990s and 2009-2011 period saw similar floods. Only location, intensity and period of rainfall alters in these big-wet events. I have seen several bigger, but they were spread over longer periods, so the effect was lower.
Claims the event is ‘different’ this time, ignores numerous almost identical events within living memory, and also ignores historical documents and records of even bigger events in the past. In earlier events during the 19th century, and early 20th century, whole towns had to be physically moved (shops, houses, businesses the lot) to the tops of local hills, after many hundreds of deaths from giant floods within central and northern Queensland. What occurred this time was just a typical classic ‘big-wet’.
All the rest of the noise about it is media and internet hype, as there is nothing out of the range of natural variability this time. It is smaller than many past events. We experience such events about every 10 years. This weather pattern can last for 2 to 3 summers in a row. It’s usually associated with a fairly warm Gulf of Carpentaria (creating slow-moving monsoon low-pressure centers within a trough in Queensland, and/or Northern Territory) and a cooler than normal Coral Sea (which we presently have). Combined with a blocking-High pattern over the Tasman Sea, which creates persistent SW Pacific trade winds, leading to strong tropical convergence banding and rain areas in North and central Queensland.
This is the classic ‘Big-Wet’ weather pattern, it is nothing new. It’s a recurring ‘decadal’ cycle that creates the classic, “land of droughts and flooding rains”, experiences and typical agricultural boom and bust conditions. Sometimes it occurs more often (the floods occurred several times during the 1970s, triggered by numerous major cyclones), sometimes less. The mid-1980s to late-1990s was strongly drought-dominated, and the Big-Wet pattern was almost absent.
The strongest cyclone events and most persistent ‘Big-Wet’ events usually occur in the cooler years. And the Spring and Summer of 2018-2019 have been particularly cool in North Queensland. However, that same Tasman Sea blocking-High which is a major factor in creating these cooler 'big-wet' conditions, is also a major factor in creating heat-wave conditions within Victoria and South Australia, as very hot central Australian air is drawn back down over the SE city areas, like Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra or Sydney, by the Tasman blocking high.
The main population centers are all in the normally much cooler South Eastern part of Australia, so they scream the loudest about how hot it is within such heat waves, even when it's also cool and pleasant in Queensland (and also cool and pleasant in southern Western Australia this year, and last). That natural balancing pattern, nationally, is however ignored amongst the general heat-wave hysteria that ensues and gets hyped to the max within SE media outlets.
But there’s nothing 'unprecedented' about those heat-waves, nor the routine weather cycle that produces it, because to get the 'big-wet' event you'll likely also get a big heat-wave event in southern states. It's never been any different during all of European settlement history within the continent. So much for the tedious histrionics about ‘climate-change’ doom each time that prosaic cyclic pattern re-occurs.
If we stop making electrons, or driving cars, and take up a 100% indigenous lifestyle, that pattern will not go way. Because humans don't cause it. The ignorance and stupidity of the weather 'debate', pretending to be a climate ‘debate’ within Australia, is more-or-less equivalent to people in the USA claiming that if the USA turned off all of its power stations, and stopped driving all of its cars, then tornadoes would just stop forming and go away. No they won't because the tornadoes were never caused by humans in the first place. Same with heat waves and big-wet rains in Australia.
It’s very unfortunate that such an incredible stupor and ignorance is being created by and then pandered-to plus enabled by politicians, government weather-agencies and a national broadcaster, but it is. The level of official perversity and institutional corruption has no end in sight.
Volunteers drop fodder, supplies by helicopter in fight to save surviving cattle from floods
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-02-16/flood-volunteer-relief-effort/10818186
North Queensland flood emergency brings heroes and heartbreak in equal measure
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-17/heroes-and-heartbreaks-of-the-townsville-floods/10799144
Latest ECMWF shows this same low-pressure system, now called Tropical Cyclone Oma, is giving an early indication of returning to North Queensland's coastal areas late next week:
