As Bushfire Remnants Smolder In Wake Of Record Heat, Coastal Australia Inundated By "Stuck" Cyclone

[hatrack]

The east coast of Australia has been drenched by floods and torrential rains, even as recent bush fires affecting much of the country continued to burn. Four people are known to have died as Australians get a further taste of extreme weather that is predicted to become more common as the planet warms.

The deluge came as a storm that started as tropical cyclone Oswald just north of Australia was dragged south over most of the east coast by a low-pressure system extending all the way to New South Wales, says Richard Wardle of the Bureau of Meteorology in Queensland. As it hit land, Oswald lost its cyclone status but remained a "vigorous" storm, Wardle says.

With no low-pressure zone further east to pull Oswald out to sea, the storm stayed over land, moving slowly south and dumping huge amounts of rain on coastal communities. Bundaberg, a town in Queensland, experienced its worst-ever flood as the storm lingered nearby for nearly 24 hours, leading to the evacuation of 7500 people from their homes. In Brisbane, the floods were almost as bad as those that devastated the city two years ago.

In Queensland and New South Wales, the deluge arrived while the bush fires that broke out two weeks were still smouldering. At the time, the Bureau of Meteorology said that the exceptionally hot, dry weather that led to the fires was "consistent" with climate change. Experts are now drawing the same conclusions about the rains.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23115-australia-lurches-from-fire-to-flood.html

[joshcryer]

1. The 2010–2011 Queensland floods were supposed to be "once in 100 years."

Two years ago.