Heavy rain is expected to return across parts of New South Wales later this week, while flood warnings remain across large parts of Victoria.
Flood warnings remain in eastern Victoria after heavy rain and strong winds lashed Gippsland, with the region expected to be soaked again on Wednesday.
Moderate flood warnings have been issued for the Mitchell and Snowy rivers, with minor warnings issued for the Avon, Cann, Genoa, Tambo and Nicholson rivers. There is also a flood watch warning for East Gippsland and the eastern parts of West and South Gippsland.
“The reason for that is that the water is still travelling through the catchments,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s Miriam Bradbury said.
“So as that water is moving downstream, we will likely continue to see changes to the flood warnings as the catchment and the flood gauges respond to that movement of water,” Bradbury said.
Bradbury said there was a deep low pressure system moving across from the south-east NSW coast across eastern Australia over the weekend moving quite close to the Gippsland coast, bringing with it strong west to south-westerly winds, as well as significant rain across Gippsland.
She said the immediate threat of severe weather had passed, with a low pressure system just east of Bass Strait moving east across the Tasman sea today.
“That low is now moving offshore, so it’s moving out across the Tasman Sea and taking the worst of those impacts with it,” she said.
A trough crossing Victoria on Wednesday was expected to bring increased shower activity to the south, particularly Gippsland, but Bradbury said rainfall totals are not expected to be anything like that experienced on the weekend, with two to 10mm expected across most parts of Gippsland, and up to 20 to 30mm in the very far east parts of Gippsland.
The Princes Highway, between Orbost and Genoa, and the Monaro Highway are closed due to flooding, fallen trees and landslips.
Numerous homes in the region are without power, with Mallacoota, Cann River and Marlo the worst affected.
Ausnet head of communications Karen Winsbury said a combination of heavy rain and road closures prevented teams, including helicopters, accessing the region overnight.
By 3pm Monday power was restored to 1,100 customers in Mallacoota and crews were working to restore 800 more services across Gippsland.
A spokeswoman for the SES said it received fewer calls than expected.
There had been 62 calls for help in East Gippsland over the previous 24 hours, she said on Monday.
A specialist team with a boat was positioned in the area overnight, but was not needed.
While rain eased across most of Victoria, areas of New South Wales were expected to cop another soaking in coming days.
#HeavyRain may return to parts of the #NSW coast later this week. The model here shows a 6 hr rainfall maxima of 50-100mm near Sydney on Thursday. The location of the maxima shouldn't be taken literally as this may change with each model run. Updated daily-https://t.co/6MJytdShu1 pic.twitter.com/cyL6Fh4A7u
— Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales (@BOM_NSW) April 4, 2022
With Australian Associated Press
