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 Friday 16: Torrential rain brings flooding to western QLD and NW NSW
Very heavy rain has fallen over the 24 hours to 9 this morning causing flash flooding in western QLD and closing main highways and turning other roads into bogs in western NSW. The perfect scenario for this sort of event happened on Thursday and today when three things coincided. Firstly, a northwesterly airstream moved a very moist airstream into the west of both states while a complex set of troughs lay across the west of the states. Low pressure troughs have a cyclonic curvature which causes air to rise. Thirdly slightly cooler upper air moved across the region, increasing instability.
In the western QLD Gulf Country, there were numerous reports of rain between 60 and 100mm in the 24 hours to 9 this morning, mainly along a line from Mt Isa to Julia Creek. Highest official totals were 97.6mm at Mt Isa Mine and 94mm at nearby May Downs, but there were unofficial reports of up to 140mm in Mt Isa itself. There was flash flooding around Mt Isa, and the Leichhardt River, which has its source near the city, rose rapidly, one local telling ABC News he had never seen the river so high.
In northwestern NSW, a broad area of heavy rain with embedded thunderstorms gave downpours through most of the daylight hours yesterday giving many falls over 30mm. 46.2mm at White Cliffs was the highest reported, with Weatherzone reporting that the 42 of that that fell between 9am and 4pm was the heaviest for December in over 12 years. 28.4mmm at Wilcannia over the 24 hours to 9 this morning was the heaviest December 24-hour total in at least the 16 years the Automatic Weather Station has been operating. During the evening, this area of heavy rain moved SE as far as the Central Tablelands and south into the Riverina, where Yanco's 51.6mm was also a new record. Numerous roads are now closed or affected by flooding in the western half of the state.
Friday 16: Newsbits
 Updated bushfire outlook worst in western VIC and NSW: An updated Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for Southern Australia has been issued warning of increased risk especially of grassfires across the western two-thirds of both NSW and VIC. The update is in response to the sudden cut-off in rain and an outlook of very dry, warm conditions ahead so that strong vegetation growth has been started but will dry out just as bushfire weather conditions worsen. This pdf version (download) gives more detailed information on the changes as well as state-by-state outlooks.
 Cyclone chances increase around northern Australia: The forecast southward movement of the monsoon trough towards the continent, as reported in AWN News in the past few days, will bring increased moisture and instability into our northern areas where sea surface temperatures are currently a high 28° to 30°. This has the potential to form cyclones anywhere from the NW to the NE of the continent. To underline the fact, there's a strong chance a tropical depression currently about 200km NW of Fiji will develop into a cyclone soon, with stong winds, heavy rain and flooding already affecting the country. Nausori, near Suva, recorded 226mm in 24 hours between yesterday and today.
Full steam ahead for NW NSW harvest: The first harvest after four years of drought is under way in northwest NSW. ABC Rural reports that small villages are springing up on properties to bring in the bumper crop of wheat, barley and chickpeas.
Winter weather across much of the northern half of the USA: Winter weather watches and warnings are in place across a huge swath of the northern USA from California in the west to New York State in the east and south to the Texas Panhandle. Heavy snow is already falling, especially lake effect snow bands around the southern shores of the Great Lakes, and blizzards are occurring in upstate New York according to WeatherNation.
 Possible Trump actions electrify climate science community: With climate change skeptics in command at the White House and previous threats to remove all funding for climate research, the climate science community could be excused feeling precarious. Reuters sums up their feelings and actions so far while the Guardian provides a who's who of the backgrounds of of the President-elect's appointments. And this side of the Pacific, the Guardian reports that climate science denial and an antipathy towards environmentalism has been alive and prospering in our political power struggles for the last ten years.
 Britain's hardest winter: Still recoiling from the horrors of World War II, Britain endured its longest, snowiest winter in living memory in 1946/47. Snow drifts were recorded up to 7 feet deep and from December to March the snow kept coming and coming as far south as Somerset. The Guardian recalls the event and the misery it caused.
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