One person has been killed and dozens rescued from floodwaters as wild weather batters Australia’s east coast, forcing evacuations.<\/p>\n
Residents on parts of Sydney’s northern beaches were told to leave their homes after rapidly rising floodwaters impacted several properties.<\/p>\n
The evacuation orders forced locals and holiday makers near Narrabeen Lagoon to head to higher ground on Saturday night, although warnings were downgraded on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
Widespread, heavy rainfall led to parts of the city’s northern beaches and the Central Coast receiving up to 200 millimetres of rain in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Floodwaters at Narrabeen are expected to take several days to recede.<\/p>\n
The NSW State Emergency Service made 25 rescues of people trapped in floodwaters across the state, many in Sydney, as cars became submerged on inundated roadways.<\/p>\n
At Great Mackerel Beach, an isolated outpost on the northern beaches that is accessible only by boat, a landslide damaged numerous homes and at least one person was injured.<\/p>\n
Other regions such as Goulburn, in the NSW Southern Tablelands, were smashed with hailstorms.<\/p>\n
The storm system claimed the life of a woman on Saturday after a tree branch fell on her car on Macquarie Pass, southwest of Wollongong.<\/p>\n
At least 1000 SES volunteers were on the ground on Sunday responding to weekend call-outs, with the busiest units in the south coast, Illawarra, Sydney and Hunter regions.<\/p>\n
NSW SES spokeswoman Emily Barton told AAP rain had been experienced “far and wide” across the state.<\/p>\n
As of 10am on Sunday, she said crews had responded to over 2100 incidents, mostly in Sydney and the surrounding area.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got about 1000 SES volunteers that have been active during this operational response, and they remain ready to respond to any further calls for assistance,” Barton said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got high-clearance vehicles and flood rescue teams that are on standby, particularly through metropolitan Sydney and the Central Coast regions, where we’re expecting to see the rainfall continue today.<\/p>\n
“But storms are possible anywhere north of Wollongong and thunderstorms could bring those isolated, intense rainfalls that we saw late last night in the northern beaches and the Central Coast.”<\/p>\n
Barton said clean-up efforts would continue over the next 24 to 48 hours, with further severe thunderstorms forecast for later in the week.<\/p>\n
Warnings remain in place for hazardous surf on the east coast at beaches stretching from Newcastle to Batemans Bay, as well as the Eden coast.<\/p>\n
Senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said the coastal trough that caused the storms stalled over the Central Coast, leading to repeated downfalls.<\/p>\n
“That’s why we just had storm after storm going over the same area, dropping 30 to 50mm each time,” he said.<\/p>\n
“After four or five of those, some places racked up to 200mm which has led to quite a bit of flooding.”<\/p>\n
Rain was expected to continue early on Sunday afternoon with thunderstorm warnings in place around Sydney and Newcastle, but conditions would start to ease late in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Queensland also experienced significant rainfall in two parts of the state, with Port Douglas receiving 109mm and more than 60mm dumped across the southeast. <\/p>\n
Further thunderstorms are expected on Sunday, while more than 2000 properties remain without power in the Lockyer Valley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One person has been killed and dozens rescued from floodwaters as wild weather batters Australia’s east coast, forcing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-239081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}