“a cyclone event”. “We never expected this rain. “This rain bomb is just really, you know, it’s unrelenting… It’s just coming down in buckets,” she said, pleading with people in Brisbane to stay home. “Can I say to everyone from the outset today, if you don’t have to be on the roads, please do not be on the roads,” the state Premier said during a briefing on Sunday.
Meanwhile, about 700 people have been asked to evacuate the city of Gympie about 170 kilometres north of Brisbane, after the water level of the Mary River surged beyond 22.06 metres, to create the town’s worst flood in over a hundred years. According to meteorologists, thunderstorms are expected to continue through Monday before moving south to New South Wales, where some communities in the north-east are at risk and have been asked to leave. “Life threatening flash flooding and major riverine flooding is possible,” the New South Wales Bureau of Meteorology said on Twitter.
