The SEQ Sky River

As you may have heard, it is been raining a bit in Southeast Queensland. Going by the BoM maps, some places have had 500 mm in the last 30 hours.

What you mightn’t know is that the rain has been falling in a peculiar fashion for the last 6 hours. Basically there has been a sky river flowing SSW from the Sunshine Coast down to the New England Tableland. Rain was pulsing along 30 km wide corridor for about 300 km. The corridor slowly slid SE at a rate of about 10 km per hour. [If you look at the 128 km Brisbane (Mt Stapylton) Rainfall map – rain since 9 am 11.1.2011 http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR66C.shtml you can get a feel for what I mean]

I’m not sure how the meteorologists will describe this phenomenon – I can’t recall watching a linear rainfall event like this before.

A lot of people were evacuating the city when I hopped onto my bicycle for a careful ride home at 1 pm. Although the tide is not particularly high today the river was close to spilling onto Southbank.

Fortunately, the sky river hasn’t been flowing too much over Helidon, which appears to have had less than 40 mm since 9 am. Dayboro on the other hand has had more than 200 mm. I guess the Button Quail at Lake Samsonvale have taken to the life rafts.

Regards, Laurie.

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