Aerial images reveal scale of Victorian floods

Traditional bushfire season was supposed to be back this year after recent wet summers, but floods returned to Victoria as January rainfall records were broken just nine days into 2024 – and now, more showers could be on the way.

Emergency warnings were issued throughout central Victoria earlier this month after thunderstorms rolled across the state soon after New Year’s Day, bringing tropical downpours and flash flooding to towns expecting a long, hot and dry El Nino summer.

Technology firm Nearmap captured the inundation using an aerial camera system attached to planes. The Age can now share the bird’s-eye view of the damage.

The images show that while the flooding wasn’t as widespread and prolonged as the Victorian floods of October 2022, the waters still damaged houses, cut roads and swamped farmland.

The floodwaters hit regional communities still recovering from the devastation of a little more than a year ago.

Flood-prone Rochester, on the banks of the Campaspe River between Bendigo and Echuca, was again one of the hardest hit.

“It’s just never-ending. Never-ending,” Rochester resident Janine Cole told this masthead a week ago. “We were so excited to think we were going to move back here in the bungalow. Something has to be done.”

Nearmap’s aerial images of January’s floods aren’t available for all affected regions – like parts of Gippsland that also experienced wild weather.

Speed was prioritised ahead of getting a perfect view from the sky – so cloudy weather may obscure some photos.

But the available imagery still shows some profound changes in rural Victoria after recent rainfall – from the rural locality of Nanneella in the Goulburn Valley to the larger town of Seymour closer to Melbourne.

In the latter town, seven businesses suffered above-floor flooding, while 11 homes were inundated. Alerts advising residents to evacuate were issued for both Seymour and Yea on Monday, January 8.

Six properties in Yea (population 2000) suffered above-floor flooding, while 17 homes were inundated.

Even on Wednesday night, the Goulburn River running through both towns remained under a minor flooding warning after another band of storms crossed the state. Flood alerts for the Loddon and Murray rivers were also active on Wednesday.

The weather bureau predicts there is a good chance showers will hit the city and other central areas on Thursday. Cloudy skies are also forecast for Gippsland and the state’s south-west.

Last week meteorologist Bri Macpherson said the first nine days of January had set the record for the wettest start to the year in Victoria since records began around 1900.

“If we had no further rainfall for the rest of January, this month would still be within the top 20 wettest Januaries that we have on record,” she told reporters at a press conference.

“So [it’s] quite a significant event.”

Amid increasingly extreme weather, the bureau now faces concerns from some disaster-hit Australians that its forecasts are less reliable – a suggestion it rejects.

The January flooding that Nearmap’s aerial images show is a far cry from the hot, dry conditions associated with the El Nino declared last year.

However, the bureau points out that August to October was the driest three-month stretch in Australia on record. The weather bureau’s actual summer forecast, issued in November, also suggested an unusually warm summer, not necessarily an extremely dry one.

Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climatologist at the University of Melbourne, told this masthead last week that El Nino didn’t always mean bushfire and drought.

“It has its biggest impact in spring, but then it decays in late summer,” he said.

“Maybe that nuance is something we as a nation need to get our head around.”

With Liam Mannix

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