Tropical Cyclone Koji is set to make landfall in Queensland’s far north, threatening to unleash more flooding in the region.<\/p>\n
Heavy rain and damaging winds are expected when the category one storm crosses the coast between Townsville and Bowen on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
The Bureau of Meteorology said the system is likely to bring wind gusts of up to 120km\/h and intense rainfall that could cause dangerous and life-threatening flash flooding between Townsville and Proserpine.<\/p>\n
Warnings are in place for much of the northeast Queensland coast from Townsville to Mackay, including Bowen, Proserpine and the Whitsunday Islands.<\/p>\n
Premier David Crisafulli was adamant on Saturday that the already hard-hit region was “better prepared than ever” to handle the challenge.<\/p>\n
Koji is expected to deliver heavy downpours in already-soaked catchment areas.<\/p>\n
Despite the concern, Crisafulli said swift-water rescue craft, police, SES officers and paramedics were in position and would work with residents on the ground.<\/p>\n
“The locals know their patch and the challenges,” he said.<\/p>\n
After crossing inland on Sunday morning, gales are expected to ease rapidly as Koji weakens and then tracks westwards.<\/p>\n
In the northwest, major flooding that has already heavily affected Gulf Country communities – where livestock losses are projected to be significant – continues on the Flinders River.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tropical Cyclone Koji is set to make landfall in Queensland’s far north, threatening to unleash more flooding in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-408244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}