Rainfall totals reaching 1m as towns experience worst flooding in decades

Rainfall totals from this week’s deluge in South East Queensland are approaching 1m as some regions are devastated by the worst flooding in 20 years.

Rainfall totals from this week’s deluge in southeast Queensland are approaching one metre as some regions are devastated by the worst flooding in 20 years.

Huge rainfall totals have been dumped across the southern corner since Tuesday with the Bureau of Meteorology recording 161mm at Biggenden in just an hour on Friday morning.

The Bureau of Meteorology‘s automatic station recorded more than 920mm at Pomona between Tuesday morning and Friday.

About 880mm fell during the same period at Cooran, 620mm at Moy Pocket, and 720mm at Kin Kin.

Meteorologist David Grant said some towns were expected to record totals of around the 1m for the entire weather event.

“There are locations that would be coming close to that,” he said.

“ … There are definitely a lot of locations around southeast Queensland that experienced well over their monthly rainfall in just 24 hours.”

Mr Grant deemed the amount of rain saturating the southeast as significant but said it was difficult to draw comparisons to previous floods.

“It is a very significant event … given the rises we’re going to see on a lot of our catchments around southeast Queensland, not just today but the flow on effect that we’re going to have with a lot of riverine flooding and major riverine flooding,” he said.

“For example, Gympie experiencing potentially experiencing major flooding to a point which they haven’t seen in 20 years … shows how significant this event is.”

Mr Grant said all low-lying areas around southeast Queensland which were susceptible to flooding were highly likely to be inundated today.