Nine-year-old girl and three men confirmed dead after boat capsized in south-east Queensland among death toll
The death toll from Australia’s Christmas storms has risen to nine, as the Gold Coast mayor warns his city is “not out of the woods”.
The people confirmed dead include a nine-year-old girl whose body was found after she was feared lost in stormwater drains in Brisbane.
Continue reading...Two women reported missing in flood waters in Gympie as Bureau of Meteorology warns of further thunderstorms on Boxing Day night
Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are expected to continue to batter the east coast until at least Wednesday evening, as thousands of households remained without power on Boxing Day.
Severe weather warnings have been issued for large parts of the New South Wales, Victorian and Queensland coasts, covering metropolitan areas as well as some regional areas.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed.
What’s causing the storms?
Senior meteorologist Angus Hines from the Bureau of Meteorology just spoke to ABC News about the severe thunderstorms hitting the east coast.
[It is] primarily driven by some warm humid air in the low levels of the atmosphere, which is partly contributed to by a ton of warm ocean temperatures off the east coast of Australia providing a lot of that warmth and humidity into the atmosphere.
We also have a big low pressure system higher up which just provides that extra energy and support which allows these thunderstorms do develop and grow, and as you say, they have been causing extensive disruptive weather over the last few days.
Continue reading...Boxing Day weather also predicted to be volatile across NSW, Victoria and Queensland, with more thunderstorms and rain forecast
A woman has died and more than 100,000 homes been left without power as a result of severe thunderstorms in south-east Queensland on Christmas night, with warnings of more bad weather to come on Boxing Day across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
Intense storms affected all three eastern states on Monday, with more than 1,200 calls for help to state emergency services and Sydney airport recording its wettest Christmas Day on record.
Continue reading...The Bureau of Meteorology warns of more thunderstorms and heavy rain for large parts of Australia’s east coast
Queenslanders and parts of New South Wales have been told to hunker down amid Christmas Day warnings for large hailstones, heavy rain and possible flash flooding.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued thunderstorm warnings on Monday afternoon for parts of Queensland’s southern interior and the north of the state,
Continue reading...The 14-year-old was being towed behind a boat on a tube when he fell off and disappeared from view on Sunday
A search and rescue effort has ended in tragedy after the body of a 14-year-old boy was pulled from a river on Queensland’s Fraser Coast.
The boy was being towed behind a boat on a tube when he fell off and disappeared from view just after 10am on Sunday.
Continue reading...NSW SES warns heavy rain may cause flash flooding with storms forecast across three states from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day
Residents of Australia’s eastern states have been warned to prepare for severe storms forecast over the Christmas weekend.
Thunderstorms are expected between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day across a broad region, including much of New South Wales and south-east Queensland and spreading down into Victoria.
Continue reading...Officers obtain court order to test Dorothy James Downie, 55, for drugs after she was charged with murder over Hamilton incident
Police have been granted an order to obtain blood samples as soon as possible from a woman charged with murder so they can be tested for the presence of drugs.
Dorothy James Downie, 55, is accused of fatally stabbing a woman known to her in the Brisbane suburb of Hamilton on Thursday.
Continue reading...Steven Miles has delivered on two of the environment movement’s most pressing concerns within a week of being sworn-in as premier
The Queensland government will ban new oil and gas developments in the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin’s rivers and floodplains – belatedly delivering on a nine-year-old election commitment to reinstate protections for the state’s pristine channel country.
The state’s premier, Steven Miles, will on Friday announce new environmental regulations for the basin, which is among the world’s last unaltered river systems.
Continue reading...‘Very disappointing results, it is no wonder that so many Australians remain fed up with our major airlines,’ Catherine King says. Follow today’s news updates live
‘Very, very clear’ renewables are the cheapest form of energy, Bowen says
Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, including its storage and transmission costs, the energy minister told ABC RN.
Its conclusions this year are unimpeachable and very, very clear.
The cheapest form of energy is renewable energy, even including the costs that go with renewable energy around storage and transmission.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed.
Just circling back to QFES assistant commissioner Kevin Walsh, who mentioned the state of the roads and reminded people in the area to be very careful when driving around.
Walsh said:
Monday afternoon was the first opportunity that we had to send in rotary aircraft, so we got rotary-wing aircraft in large numbers up in Far North Queensland at the moment through private contractors and also Australian Defence Force. So they’re very busy in the air and relocating people.
And I think the other message also is to have a look at those roads and the damage that they have sustained. There are many roads still under water where you can not see that damage. So it’s really important for the local people to realise that it’s still very, very dangerous to be driving through flooded waters because you can’t see the damage of the roads underneath it. That’s one of our key messages we’d like the local communities to heed.
So far we’ve only been able to assess about 60 properties. I think throughout today though, we’ll get a better sense of how many properties are affected, and then we’ll be looking for further packages of disaster assistance that will put together or put together with the commonwealth.
But just judging from the other emergencies that I’ve been a part of, we’re talking billions not millions [of dollars].
Continue reading...Modelling produced by Institute of Marine Science shows ‘huge area’ in which waves and flood waters could have destroyed coral colonies
Cyclone Jasper’s slow-moving progress across the Coral Sea exposed as much as 20% of the Great Barrier Reef to waves high enough to break apart corals, according to modelling from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims).
Scientists are also concerned flood waters from ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper that drained out into the reef’s lagoon waters could affect corals and seagrass meadows close to shore.
Continue reading...The Environmental Defenders Office says proposed legal changes will ‘water down’ protections against subsidence caused by gas wells
Environmental groups and farmers have criticised proposed amendments to Queensland’s planning laws that they say will make the regulation of coal seam gas “even weaker” and “abandon responsibility” for sinking farmland.
The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) and Lock the Gate made the comments in a joint submission in response to draft amendments to two key pieces of state legislation regulating the management of CSG-induced subsidence – when the extraction of gas underground causes the ground above to sink.
Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter
Continue reading...Follow the latest updates live
Communities urged to exercise caution amid ‘huge volumes of water’
QFES commissioner Steve Smith has also made some comments on the flood situation up in Queensland.
There’s still huge volumes of water moving down through the systems, so at different points on the water, in the water catchments, they’re going to have rises. So we need people to stay informed, and they’ve done a great job in doing that. So we want that to continue with the support from community.
No. So we have commenced a search and rescue investigation into that. Degarra was one of the communities we couldn’t get into yesterday, but we have been speaking to a local man where there were a number of rescues completed yesterday in Degarra. So we have dispatched the water police vessel this morning, which left in the early hours of this morning and is on the way to that location. And in addition to that, we’ve now got rescue helicopters going that way as well.
Continue reading...It was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill category two – but flooded streets and cut-off communities show an intensity that nobody saw coming
A lifelong resident of Machans Beach, just outside Cairns, Euan Williams had seen plenty of cyclones before. Once ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper passed over the community on Wednesday last week as a category-two storm, that confirmed it. It wouldn’t amount to much.
“Being locals, a cat two’s sort of like a run of the mill cyclone,” he said.
Continue reading...Floods exceeding 1977 levels expected, Steven Miles says, as heavy rain leaves 10,500 homes without power
Cairns airport has been closed in anticipation of record flooding in the far north Queensland city as the state premier, Steven Miles, declared a “serious weather emergency” in the wake of ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper.
On Sunday afternoon Miles said flood levels in Cairns were expected to exceed the previous record of 1977 and there were “significant concerns” for many communities in the far north.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed.
Up to 49 tonnes of illicit drugs prevented from reaching Australia
Australian federal police and international law enforcement partners have prevented up to 49 tonnes of illicit drugs from reaching Australia throughout the past financial year.
The AFP cannot overstate the amount of harm that 29 tonnes of methamphetamine could have caused to the community if it had not been intercepted by law enforcement.
On average, close to 12,000 Australians are hospitalised from methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin use every 12 months.
Continue reading...Major flood warnings for state’s far north as storm system moves towards Northern Territory
A 10-year-old girl is fighting for life after being struck by lightning as more wild weather descended on Queensland, causing major flooding in Cairns.
The girl was injured at a private property in Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast at 2.30pm on Saturday during severe thunderstorms due to ex-Cyclone Jasper.
Continue reading...NSW Ambulance expects 10% uptick in calls and Bureau of Meteorology warns of the chance of destructive afternoon storms
Large parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland are experiencing a heatwave, with extreme risk of fires around Sydney, health warnings for the effects of prolonged heat and the chance of destructive storms.
Temperatures in Sydney are forecast to hit 34C on Saturday, but further west it will be hotter still, with Penrith set for 36C and Richmond 36C, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Continue reading...Fate of more than a dozen islands ‘hangs in the balance’ because of climate crisis, with vexed questions about maritime jurisdiction
More than a dozen of Australia’s coral islands that help to extend the country’s maritime jurisdiction are at high risk of disappearing because of climate change, according to a study.
The fate of the low-lying islands now “hangs in the balance”, said the scientist who led the study, with rising sea levels, marine heatwaves, intensifying weather systems and ocean acidification compounding the risk.
Continue reading...