The town of Warwick on Queensland's Southern Downs "missed the bullet" last night after heavy rainfall on Sunday night put the area on alert for flooding.
Warwick experienced record amounts of rainfall for a single day in April in the 24 hours to yesterday morning, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
"We saw between 60 and 110 millimetres in the 24 hours to 9am on Monday morning in many locations around Warwick," Meteorologist Shane Kennedy said.
The Condamine River fell short of its forecast 7-metre peak, dropping from 6.46 metres to under 5 metres in Warwick this morning and is expected to continue receding.
The nearby town of Pratten is on emergency alert with recent rain pushing levels in the Condamine River to 8.2 metres this morning.
Residents say no homes were impacted.
Southern Downs Mayor Vic Pennisi said Warwick "missed the bullet" with mostly vacant land being inundated, but it was expected there would be damage to some road infrastructure, including gravel roads.
Town was close to being cut off
He said while damage was still being assessed, he was aware of one house at Allora that was flooded.
He said one person who drove into floodwaters at Warwick was rescued but not injured.
"We were 500 millimetres away from closing the main highway … which would have meant the town was cut off and trucks would have been backed up on the other side of it."
Mr Pennisi said the food producers in the area were the hardest hit from inundation, which turned their farms into "quicksand".
He said producers growing sorghum, used in cereals, were unable to access their crops and any produce harvested will be of poor quality.
"It's just soup in places and you know the farms almost turn into quicksand … that's a big issue for our food producers, which ultimately will flow back to the consumer at some point in time. So we need to spare a thought for those people,'' he said.
Warwick's flood threat not over
With more rainfall predicted on Friday, Mr Pennisi is worried Warwick could still face flooding.
However, the bureau said further flooding was unlikely but shouldn't be completely ruled out.
"Rainfall on the Friday and Saturday could potentially see further rises if we get some of those larger totals in the wrong spots," Mr Kennedy said.
"At this stage, we are expecting that rainfall to generally be less than 10mm but no more than five to 15mms. If things go to plan I am not expecting any further [river] rises but there certainly is still that slight risk…"
Mr Pennisi said with the ground already saturated, it would not take much.
"You don't need much rain to make the river swell. If we get three or four inches we will have the threat of flooding again," he said.
"There are a lot of moving parts in a flood…you can't control nature, as a tree might fall in the river upstream and that will change the whole flood."
He said the community will not relax until the water recedes and there is no rain on the horizon.
"You can start to breathe and collect the information and data you need to work out what the recovery is going to look like," he said.
Dam at capacity
Queensland government dam operator Sunwater said no rain fell into the Leslie Dam catchment near Warwick overnight with its levels at 100.4 per cent at 9:30 this morning.
A Sunwater spokesperson said the dam reached capacity and began spilling at 2:30am on Monday after the catchment received an average of 40mm of rainfall on Sunday night.
The dam level reached the second-highest flood on record, peaking at 7:20am on Monday morning, 10mm below the flood record of 103.56 per cent in January 2011, the spokesperson said.
"At its peak on Monday morning, the dam was releasing 31,878 megalitres a day. The releases have now reduced to a rate of 3,000 megalitres a day to return it to its full supply level," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said Sunwater will continue to monitor inflows across the catchment and keep downstream residents and wider communities informed of any development.
Sunwater are liaising with the Local Disaster Management Group as necessary.
The spokesperson said locals should check their website for dam level information.
The Bureau of Meteorology said a Tropical Low north of Vanuatu was expected to stay away from Queensland, but it could still affect coastal conditions later in the week.
