Queensland is on alert as a Monsoon trough over northern Australia has begun to dump heavy rain over the far north. Meanwhile the bureau has forecast intense rainfall in the south-east to continue into the summer season.
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00:00 Well, the wet season is well and truly upon us here in Queensland, not only for the far
00:06 north as we've seen, but also here in the southeast.
00:09 As you can probably see behind me, Brisbane has had consistent rainfall over the last
00:13 few days and that's actually forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology to continue right through
00:17 until next week, not only for the south, but also for central and western parts of the
00:22 state.
00:23 That intense localised and heavy rainfall is actually largely due to a humid air mass
00:28 that's sitting over the region.
00:30 That's triggering showers and thunderstorms that are forecast to continue.
00:34 We did see some of the effects of that on Tuesday in the Ipswich area.
00:38 In Springfield they recorded 131 millimetres of rainfall within a three hour period.
00:44 Now the main concern for that is while it's not actually a lot of rainfall, it is for
00:48 already saturated and sodden ground and that's something that's a concern not only here in
00:52 the southeast, but also in the far north where they're predicted to see anywhere between
00:56 200 and 400 millimetres of rain over the next few days.
01:00 Across Queensland the storage capacity for dams is also sitting at about 70 per cent,
01:05 but several dams have already begun spilling from the rainfall that we've received over
01:10 the last month or so, including the Hinns Dam on the Gold Coast which is sitting at
01:14 capacity at 100.3 per cent and already spilling.
01:18 We did hear from Senator Murray Watt who has said and warned that we could see these compounding
01:23 weather events continue more frequently into the future.
01:27 You don't want to see these kind of compounding events but unfortunately that's something
01:30 that we're seeing more often in Australia these days is not just one event that happens
01:35 out of the blue, but a particular area being hit by compounding events in similar weeks
01:39 or similar months.
01:41 Even look at what happened in Victoria this week where we had the same areas that were
01:44 hit by floods 18 months ago hit again.
01:47 This is a new reality that we're having to adjust to and of course I think we all feel
01:51 for people who are going through these situations.
01:53 A huge clean-up effort is underway here in the South East for the Gold Coast, Scenic
01:57 Rim and Logan areas as they continue to pick up the pieces after they had severe thunderstorms
02:03 lash the region over the Christmas holiday period.
02:07 Work is being done to remove trees as well as clear debris from roads.
02:11 The main concern is the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting that we can expect more of
02:16 those severe thunderstorms continue throughout this summer season.
02:20 So again a lot of wild weather on the cards for Queensland in the outlook ahead for this summer.
02:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]