RECORD BREAKING RAINFALL LIKELY THIS WEEKEND IN PARTS OF NORTHERN QUEENSLAND
21
May, 2016
Continuing
our series coverage of the rain event for North-Eastern Australia.
This morning we are taking a look at honing in on those areas that
may experience substantial and possible record breaking rainfall this
weekend from the unseasonal combination of tropical moisture and an
upper level trough. The image below from the Bureau Of Meteorology
depicts how much rainfall North Queensland is expecting across the
next 4 days (Saturday until Tuesday). You can see the clear cutoff
for heavy falls is around Ingham to Cooktown on the East coast.
However it's the rain across the inland and Western Peninsula that is
most surprising.
The
rarity of an event like this can not be underplayed. We need to
understand that we are now getting stuck into the dry season.
Ordinarily by this time in May we have seen a drying out process in
the lower levels of the atmosphere as strong HIGHS dominate Southern
and Central Australia. These HIGHS are interspersed with strong cold
fronts that drag dry polar air northwards in their wake. This season
we really haven't seen that happen. So far we've had temperatures
that have been some of the warmest on record, we have some of the
highest dew points on record across many stations in Northern
Australia as well. It's almost as if the wet season really hasn't
finished.
To
truly understand the intensity and rarity of this event, let's take a
look at some rain averages for May and when you look at these
averages, bear in mind that a huge proportion of the average May
rainfall tends to fall in the first 2 weeks of the month.
STATION
|
PREVIOUS
MONTH RECORD (mm)
|
PREVIOUS
24HR RECORD (mm)
|
EXPECTED
RAIN IN NEXT 4 DAYS (ROUGH GUIDE in mm)
|
AVERAGE
MONTHLY RAIN (mm)
|
Kowanyama
(West Peninsula)
|
291
|
125
|
120-200
|
11
|
Palmerville
(inland Peninsula)
|
171
|
133
|
70-100
|
16
|
Karumba
(Gulf Country)
|
13
|
13
|
30-50
|
1
|
Cairns
(North East Coast)
|
322
|
90
|
100-200
|
91
|
Innisfail
(North-East Coast)
|
1063
|
214
|
150-250
|
302
|
Cooktown
(East Peninsula)
|
278
|
108
|
100-200
|
60
|
|
|
|
|
|
The
issue I have with the event is that its true intensity is likely to
go unrecorded. The highlighted area below is where the computer
models are predicting falls of 200-300mm (and over 100m/day) yet
the Bureau Of Meteorology unfortunately have no recording
stations. So the record-breaking nature of this event in this region
is likely to never see a record book and that disappoints me greatly.
Nevertheless, despite this lack of record, I hope the figures above
show you that it is certainly one of the more significant and
widespread events to affect the Far North of Queensland at this
time of year.
In
our blog update later today, I will go into detail of when and where
we will witness these tremendous rainfalls using
high resolution deterministic modelling rather than
consensus/ensemble modelling. Remember the intensity of this event
isn't likely to surface until overnight tonight and into tomorrow. So
for today we can expect scattered showers, but tomorrow is when the
magic happens.
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