Flash flooding, winds whip Australia's northeast

Yahoo News 21 May 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Tens of thousands of homes were without power and hundreds of schools closed on Thursday as a wild storm front lashed Australia's northeast coast.

A state of emergency was declared overnight in Queensland state, which was pounded by gale-force winds exceeding 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour and torrential rains.

A 46-year-old was killed when freak winds ripped a sheet of metal from a building on the Gold Coast tourist strip and it smashed through his office window, police said.

Up to 75,000 homes and businesses suffered blackouts as gusting winds felled trees and power lines, and the region received one-third of its annual rainfall in a single day, sparking landslides and causing roads to collapse.

Enough rain fell over 48 hours in Brisbane, the state's capital, to supply drinking water for more than a year.

Massive ocean swells up of up to 15 metres (50 feet) hammered the coastline, with waves at Currmbin so powerful a car was swept from a beach carpark into the surf.

The state's premier Anna Bligh said it was likely to be among the highest damage bills Queensland had ever seen, with the worst flooding since 1974.

"We are certainly not out of the woods yet, all the weather reports are indicating there is certainly more to come," Bligh said.

"There's a very high chance that what's coming will be as bad, if not worse, as some of what we've seen."

Almost 250 schools were closed and hundreds of homes were evacuated in the neighbouring state of New South Wales (NSW), where emergency services said they were bracing for flash-flooding and severe winds.

"This (storm) system will bring very heavy rain, high winds and large waves to northeast NSW over the next few days before weakening and moving away later Saturday," the weather bureau said.

"Destructive wind gusts exceeding 125 kilometres (78 miles) an hour are possible along the coastal fringe during the next few days."

More than 300 millimetres (12 inches) of rain was likely to fall, with low-lying coastal areas expected to be swamped by tides exceeding the year's highest mark, it said.

Floods unleashed by cyclonic rains in February saw much of Queensland declared a disaster area, with more than one million square kilometres (385,000 square miles) deluged and 3,000 homes damaged.

Further floods hammered the region last month, washing a number of motorists to their death and claiming the life of a 12-year-old girl who was swimming in a swollen weir.