The rain has finished in Western Australia's Moore and Hill river catchments, but the water has not: river levels will stay elevated through Sunday and possibly into Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology says, with localised flooding still possible around Moora.
The Bureau's fifth flood watch for the catchments, issued at 10.03am local time on Sunday, says elevated river levels are continuing after a minor flood peak passed Long Pool Bridge on the Moore River on Saturday evening. Overland inundation remains possible, some communities and homesteads may be isolated, and road conditions should be checked before travelling. The one piece of unqualified good news sits in the final line: no further rainfall of significance is forecast.
That closes the book on a two-burst event. The front and trough that crossed the state's southwest from Thursday brought falls Weatherzone called the heaviest in years for parts of the region, before sliding north, where Geraldton Airport's 48.8 millimetres in the 24 hours to 9am Saturday was its biggest July day this year, according to the Bureau's daily observations. What is left is drainage: the runoff from those falls working its way downstream through a district that had seen almost no rain in the first half of the month.
On the other side of the country the problem is arriving, not leaving. A low sitting off southern Queensland, wedged against a strong inland high, is driving moist southeasterly winds onto the coast between North Stradbroke Island and Coffs Harbour, and Weatherzone's analysis of gauge data puts the three-day totals to Saturday at 76 millimetres at Point Lookout, 71 at Cape Byron and 53 at Lismore Airport, already 134 per cent of its July average. Another 30 to 50 millimetres is possible in the 24 hours to Sunday night, and hazardous surf warnings remain in force along the New South Wales coast on the Bureau's warnings summary.
The two systems are unrelated: the WA rain came from a weakening cold front, the east coast wetness from onshore flow around the offshore low, and neither is forecast to produce the other's problem. For the west, the Bureau's next flood watch for the Moore and Hill catchments is due by midday Monday, western time. For the east, the rain continues while the low sits, and the Bureau's coastal warnings are the ones to watch into the working week.
