Heavy rain and floods are expected to sweep central and southern Australia, with thunderstorms forecast for parts of every state and territory on Sunday.
Much of South Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria are facing a drenching, while storms could also hit Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has warned.
Queensland, SA and the NT have already endured a rainy weekend, with one remote community facing its biggest downpour in a decade, thanks to a strengthening tropical low.
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Northern Queensland saw rainfall totals of up to 100mm on Saturday, according to a BoM senior meteorologist Sarah Scully.
Central Queensland has been soaked with rain since December, with numerous flood warnings in place, including for the Flinders and Cape Rivers.
“Queensland catchments are just so wet and saturated that they only need really moderate rainfall for the river systems to respond,” Scully told Guardian Australia.
The BoM has warned intense rainfall could lead to dangerous, life-threatening flash flooding in Queensland’s west and the central NT, with 24-hour totals of up to 160 mm expected.
The storms could bring damaging winds of about 90 km/h and threaten cattle and other livestock, the BoM warned. The warning stretches from Mount Isa and Bedourie in Queensland to Tennant Creek and Yuendumu in the NT.
A remote NT community, Alpurrurulam, recorded 250mm of rainfall over Friday night and Saturday morning, more than double the community’s monthly average and its biggest downpour in more than 10 years, according to Weatherzone.
The intense weather system was forecast to hit north-west New South Wales by Monday and could bring floods, Scully said. Scone, in NSW’s Hunter region, already recorded 102mm of rain in six hours on Saturday night.
The BoM warned that SA and the NT could face flooding, blocked roads and rising rivers from Sunday until at least Wednesday, as the weather system connects to a cold front pulling moisture south.
“[This] will combine with a very humid and unstable airmass to produce widespread heavy rainfall and thunderstorms over the north of [SA],” BoM’s warning read.
Australia’s southern states will not escape the wild weather, with rising moisture and humidity closer to the coast in SA and Victoria expected to bring rain by late Sunday.
It is the first significant rain forecast for the bushfire-affected states since December. Port Augusta recorded 48.8mm of rain in six hours on Sunday morning Scully said. Before the weekend, they’d had just 2mm all summer.
“They’ve had an extremely hot and dry summer, they experienced the record breaking temperature of 50C back in late January as well … but this morning, the rain began to fall,” she said.
Bushfires are still burning in Victoria, with an evacuation warning issued earlier on Sunday for a 1,100ha fire at Gaffneys Creek and the A1 Mine settlement, in heavily forested areas near Woods Point north of Melbourne, on Sunday.
“It’s always helpful to have any type of rainfall over a fire [so] the fires through central Victoria have the potential to be extinguished,” Scully said.
The Victorian State Control Centre said wet and windy conditions on Sunday could bring damaging winds and heavy rainfall, with localised totals of up to 60mm.
“There is a risk of flash flooding today in areas that receive this heavy rain and especially in places that have recently been burnt by bushfire,” it said. “If you are near a recent fire-affected area, please be aware of the high likelihood of landslides and debris flow.”
