Essay by Eric Worrall
Cyclone Alfred, Australia’s big East Coast cyclone was until recently hyped as a symptom of the climate apocalypse. But doomsayers are facing another disappointment from nature.
Is climate change supercharging Tropical Cyclone Alfred as it powers towards Australia?
Cyclone Alfred formed in the Coral Sea towards the end of February when sea surface temperatures were almost 1C hotter than usual
Tropical Cyclone Alfred is due to hit south-east Queensland some time on Saturday morning, bringing the risk of destructive winds, extreme flooding and storm surges to millions of people around Brisbane, the Gold Coast and northern New South Wales.
After last year was recorded as the hottest on record around the world, and the hottest for Australia’s oceans, what role could the climate crisis be playing in Tropical Cyclone Alfred and its impacts?
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/06/is-climate-change-supercharging-tropical-cyclone-alfred-as-it-powers-towards-australia
Fortunately Cyclone Alfred is turning into a fizzle. A powerful storm which will bring lots of rain and flooding, but no longer a catastrophic cyclone.
AS IT HAPPENED: Cyclone Alfred downgraded as it nears coast, expected to cross between Maroochydore and Brisbane; Albanese scraps plan for April election; ‘Dangerous times ahead’ as wind, rain hammer millions
By Adam Vidler Daniel Jeffrey Emily Bennett Yashee Sharma 12:30am Mar 8, 2025
Tropical Cyclone Alfred downgraded
By Karishma Sarkari07 Mar 2025 23:25
Cyclone Alfred has been downgraded to a category 1 storm in the latest advice issued by the Bureau of Meteorology.
The system is moving north-west at 9km/h, pushing back the timing it’s forecast to cross the coast.
Alfred is still on track to cross over the Moreton Bay Islands early on Saturday morning before crossing the mainland coast between Brisband and Maroochydore later in the day.
The cyclone is forecast to weaken as it moves inland late Saturday and Sunday.
While damaging wind gusts up to 120km/h and heavy to intense rainfall is still forecast, bringing the possibility of life-threatening flash flooding, the weather bureau says destructive wind gusts are no longer expected.
…
Read more: https://www.9news.com.au/national/tropical-cyclone-alfred-live-updates-tracker-queensland-power-outages-evacuations-latest-news-headlines/13081401-e614-459c-b757-a972f4037c5d#post=6854bfed-e01d-443d-b2c2-874df6f99ceb
Are Aussie cyclones becoming more frequent?
The following is a rather confused statement from the Australian CSIRO, Australia’s peak scientific body. Cyclone frequency is declining, but their broken theories suggests cyclone frequency should be rising.
3. Has the frequency of tropical cyclones changed?
Research has shown a statistically-significant downward trend in the annual number of tropical cyclones in the Australian region over the period extending from 1981/82 to 2017/18, during the period of satellite images. The reasons for this downward trend are still being determined but are likely to be due to a combination of both natural variability and longer-term climate change. Additional non-satellite observations suggest there has also been a longer-term reduction in the number of tropical cyclones since 1900.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s satellite record is relatively short and there have been changes in the historical methods of analysis. Combined with the high variability in tropical cyclone numbers and influences of natural variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, it makes it difficult to attribute trends to any single factor.
However, it is clear that sea surface temperatures off the northern Australian coast have increased – part of a significant warming of the oceans that has been observed in the past 50 years due to increases in greenhouse gases. Warmer oceans tend to increase the amount of moisture that gets transported from the ocean to the atmosphere, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and so there is a greater potential for intense rainfall events with tropical cyclones.
…
Read more: https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2025/March/things-to-know-about-tropical-cyclones
Obviously the risk of damaging floods is still a serious concern, and the remnants of the cyclone may dump a lot of water into Brisbane’s rivers or other low laying areas. But there may be another explanation for why that flood risk in Brisbane is so severe.
From a few days ago;
…
‘Anxiously watching’: Huge Cyclone call made
Even though South East Queensland’s dams are almost full, not a single litre of water will be released until Alfred’s predicted 600mm of rain starts to fall.
“We don’t always know when and where rain will fall,” a Seqwater spokesperson told The Courier-Mail.
“Our 24/7 Flood Operations Centre is mobilised and – pending rainfall – is prepared to make controlled, gated releases later this week if required.”
…
Read more: https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/technology/environment/no-south-east-queensland-dam-releases-until-rain-from-cyclone-alfred-begins/news-story/be556f1df0aaa66a41bbd3fac8549fda
Why are dam operators being ordered to cling on to every drop of water until the last possible moment? The reason of course, is not enough dam capacity. As Brisbane and other Queensland city populations have boomed, there has been little interest in providing water resources to match the growing population. The result is dam operators have to hang on to every drop of water, and only release that water when they are certain incoming storms will hit their catchment area – even when the incoming storm is a cyclone.
SEQ does not have enough drinking water for booming population
By Felicity Caldwell
August 19, 2021 — 8.00pmSouth-east Queensland will not have enough drinking water to support its rapidly growing population amid fears the region’s dams will struggle to supply millions of extra residents.
The revelation comes as residents could be forced to endure mandatory water restrictions in less than four months.
A stark warning about the need for new water sources – such as a dam or desalination plant – was emailed to Water Minister Glenn Butcher’s office in December, with a report revealing demand for water would increase as the south-east Queensland population grew by more than two million people over the next 25 years.
…
Read more: https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/seq-does-not-have-enough-drinking-water-for-booming-population-20210818-p58jqd.html
If the dams had greater capacity, there would be much less risk of flooding – dam operators could confidently run their dams down in the face of rainfall threats, without fear of water shortages if the rain misses. The spare dam capacity could be used to soak up floodwater in the catchment area which feeds the dam.
The picture at the top of the article shows the potential consequences of failing to release dam water until the last minute.
In 2013 Brisbane was impacted by Cyclone Oswald, and suffered a severe rainfall and flooding event.
Then as now, dam operators were ordered to delay release until the last moment. The result was catastrophic – when 3ft+ of rain abruptly dumped into the catchment area of the Wivenhoe Dam, dam operators were forced to open the floodgates to save the dam, raising the Brisbane River well above normal height. The torrential dam outflow collided with the cyclonic low pressure storm surge rushing in from the sea in Brisbane’s most expensive business and residential district.
Colleges Crossing, pictured at the top of this article, is the main outflow of the Wivenhoe Dam, the water reservoir which supplies the state capital Brisbane. The water which passes through Colleges Crossing feeds into the Brisbane River, which in 2013 was a major contributor to inner city flooding. My home at the time became an island as spillway water flooded across the lowlands, cutting all the roads, and bringing misery to riverside property owners downstream of the dam.
My point is flood disasters in Brisbane have nothing to do with climate change. I doubt flood risk could ever be completely eliminated in a subtropical location like Brisbane, but floods could be mitigated by better flood control, including enlarging existing dams or building new dams. Larger dam capacity would give dam operators the confidence to run down water levels in the face of a dangerous rainfall event, even if they were not sure if the rain would hit the dam catchment, instead of clinging on to water until the last minute, then flooding the city of Brisbane with an emergency release to save the dam from catastrophic failure.
Update (EW): Brisbane might get lucky this time, the heaviest rain appears to be slightly to the South East of the Wivenhoe catchment, though since this rain is expected to last a few days there may still be a risk. It is likely just the rain over Brisbane could create at least minor flooding.
Update (EW): h/t Rick Will – Wivenhoe has a webcam – https://widget.coastalcoms.com/video/ccef2b42-a849-435e-8dbd-6fef8731c6b9
Update (EW): Looks like Brisbane is having problems with flash flooding.
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Jacobson’s 100% renewable study includes hydro with the water behind dams as signficant storage capacity.
As this story notes, water wasnt released early due to the need to preserve the water for later human consumption and irrigation. Difficult to use water for electric generation during long term drought conditions.
Wivenhoe was originally commissioned to be a flood mitigation measure, after the repeated failures over decades of the upstream Somerset Dam to do the job.
Actually, water engineers wanted two dam, Wolfdene and Wivenhoe, one for storage, and one for flood mitigation.
Only Wivenhoe was built, meaning it has to manage the conflicting tasks of supply storage and flood mitigation.
Wivenhoe’s “supply volume” is 1.165 million ML, but it can hold up to 3.13million ML.
Wolfdene fell victim to a cosy election deal between the socialist Labor and communist Greens.
Land was appropriated ready to start and the conservative government changed.
It seems to be like California, where the politicians would rather moan about climate change than actually doing anything like building dams.
Facts.
Last CA reservoir, New Melones, was completed in 1980.
In 1980, CA population was 23.7 million. It is now 39.4. 15.7 million people added over 45 years with NO increase in water storage.
California and Australia both self inflicted water wounds.
Despite what Eric says, Brisbane (pop 2.7B) has a total reservoir capacity of over 3 ML. About the same as the state of Georgia (pop 11B).
Update (EW): Nick indicated below he meant million, not billion.
I question your population numbers.
It’s just a factor of 10. No big deal.
UMMM 1000.
I hit “post” and then said “Oh schist!”
It can happen to any of us 🙁
Which ones?
One million is still 10^6; one billion is still 10^9; this makes 1B 1000*1M.
For example, PM Turnbull’s incredibly stupid Snowy2 has increased in cost from $2,000,000,000 ($2B) to 12,000,000,000 ($12B) – a factor of 6 and rising!
Cheers,
Bill
Thanks, Bill I meant Mill
My now 7yo grandson knew the difference between million and billion when he 4yo. Way too much fascination with numbers that was fuelled by NumberBlocxks that he had in the hundreds. And watched endless Youtube videos on numbers for hours on end.
watch
If Nick’s parents bought him some NumberBlocks, maybe he would be less inclined to offer up his unscientific carp.
I was told not to eat carp 🙂
That’s something none of us needs to be told hey Nick.
In Australia, carp are an introduced noxious invasive species, despoiling pristine rivers, creeks and lakes. They dig into the river beds and lake bottoms creating turgid mud.
If you catch one, by law you have to take it a distance from the water, kill it 6 times, then bury it deep enough so that scavengers such as foxes can’t dig up the carcass and chow down on it.
A few years ago, a guy started a business netting tons of carp from rivers etc, then processing them into flavoursome edible protein cakes that were meant to be provided for distribution by UN agencies to people in famine areas in places like Africa.
All went well until the UN had to be relied upon.
Then of course the whole exercise turned to shit.
So now the carp is processed into garden fertiliser products.
Carp are a bit oily, but edible. A bit like mackerel – smoke them, curry them …
I tried smoking one once Bill.
They made the cigarette paper so oily, it turned my fag into a conflagration and burned off all my carefully groomed nose hairs.
It still tasted like shit even after that though 🙁
Curry mate, you need more curry. Also, for that authentic taste, leave them in the sun awhile – at least until they come back to life …
Truth is that that was the original use for curry, the worse condition of the food the hotter the curry.
So what you’re saying, Mr, is that it wasn’t good shit?
Depends on the species, how filleted, and how cooked. Asians have very good recipes for carp. So do Germans.
I came across this one:
“Fillet the carp, brush butter on the fillets, place them inside an old sneaker covered with aluminum foil. Bake in the oven at 340 degrees for one hour. Remove from the oven, discard the carp, and eat the shoe.”
I tried that Bill.
Still tasted like shit.
You did mean 340 degrees C didn’t you?
Whatever,
Perhaps you are just not hungry enough! (joke).
While I prefer saltwater fish, carp are said to be the most consumed freshwater fish in the world.
The Lachlan CMA have released a recipe booklet:
https://riversofcarbon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/carp-recipe-ebook-A5.pdf
Enjoy,
Bill
I don’t mind redfin.
I seem to remember that while cleaning a carp, be sure to remove the “mud vein”.
(Or maybe I’m thinking catfish?)
Bleeding them seems to be a start
All true; half maybe
While an aside to Eric’s excellent post, given that millions of people in Asia and Europe (and some in the US) rely on species of carp as their source of protein, I’m amazed that clever-dicks at CSIRO would develop a herpes-type virus for release in Australian rivers. Fish COVID comes to mind.
Nothing holy about redfin or Murray cod, carp are just under-appreciated for their growth-rate and adaptability.
Why not create a market for them in other places, just like other places cultivate and market Australian native fish back to us? Why are we paying A$30+ per kg for burra bred and raised in tanks in Taiwan or Nam?
Before you go to Coles or Woolies, look at the quality of water they grow fish and prawns in in Cam Ranh bay (Latitude 11.8, Longitude 109.3) for example.
Anyway, I’d rather have a carp cook-up than beetles, grubs and locusts (in season of course!)
Cheers,
Bill
Mr. Stokes: Then why do you serve it?
Why do you carp?
Mr. Stokes: Only when I see it served up.
Depends. I used to bow hunt 50 pounder natives (not the more recent invasives) on the Potomac River. Boneless fillets were very tasty.
Research, Nick.
“Can you eat carp? You won’t believe the answer!”
https://howtofish.com.au/245-2/
Having turned into a fish story: In North America a “sucker-family” fish is called the Buffalo. You can look it up.
And the reservoir capacity,..
Brisbane has a population of around 2.7 Million.
Wivenhoe Dam has a capacity of 3.13 Million ML ! (incl
flood mitigation)
Somerset Dam has a capacity of about half a million ML.
There are several smaller reservoirs in the area.
Dams and weirs | Seqwater
What’s an ML?
What’s an ML?
megalitre = 10⁶ litres
I live here and we certainly don’t have that many people. Traffic congestion is past being awful but if we had “2.7B” we’d have pedestrian congestion.
Must be embarrassing for Nick to call out Eric only to make the same blooper. Nah, nothing embarrasses Nick, whatever it takes just with a science accent.
Georgia has 11B people? I thought the population of the entire planet was only about 9B.
Early here. For B read M
That’s alright. You were 3 orders of magnitude high on the populations and 3 orders low on the dam capacities, so it all averages out 🙂
But the B and M keys are so close 🙁
It’s worse than we thought – 6 orders on dam 🙁 But consistent 🙂
Some days it isn’t worth getting out of bed 🙁
We’ve all had those days.
https://youtu.be/oPwrodxghrw
“Missed it by that much.” 😎
Georgia?
Stacy Abrams probably makes up the difference. 😎
“Update (EW): Nick indicated below he meant million, not billion.”
Kudos for adding this note of his later correction to his original comment without actually changing the original.
(WUWT has the best MODS!)
He didn’t correct his error until he was called on it.
Some objections to the official versions:
1. Excessive use of superlatives is politics, not science, as in “is climate change supercharging cyclones” and more hype.
2. While oceans might have warmed in the last 50 years or so, the cause of the warming remains unknown, example, could be submarine volcanism. Not all that far from the Pacific warm pool.
3. Official climate change assumes atmosphere heats water, not the reverse, but both ways lack evidence.
4. Alfred described as tropical cyclone and tropical storm.. Brisbane is a few hundred kilometres south of the tropics, but tropical sounds exotic.
5. There is little to no public discussion about building more dams for drinking water, despite clear evidence from Eric Wirral of the huge cost of the floods from last minute release. Man is to blame more than nature.
6. Some say the cyclone waited offshore, not crossing the coast, because nobody had arranged a Welcome to Country twig-burning ceremony by elders.
7. Frequently mentioned correlations globally between hot ocean waters and hurricanes/cyclones are not causation and should be treated with caution, not as a certainty.
8. CSIRO is “beating about the bush of climate change” when we expect neutral, objective reporting of the science irrespective of popular talking points as in historic cyclone counts.
Than you, Eric, for objectivity in a climate of hype, spin and covering asses.
Geoff S
And this one: After last year was recorded as the hottest on record around the world
Only through averaging. Looking at individual locations shows this to be an utter lie.
And of course this February was and this March will be the hottest evah this year.
The good news is that in 20 years time after the adjustments are made they will be much cooler than they are now.
I typed Worrall and it came out Wirral.
My apologies, Eric. Geoff S
Glad that it has now weakened to just a tropical low. Still, a big rain event.
No Rud. Not even a big rain event. Examples as posted in this thread…
Highlights include 5.6mm at Sunshine Coast airport and 161mm at Brisbane airport. And to repeat that is a THREE DAY TOTAL.
A point of interest is the BOM rain radar which shows a HUGE area covered by rain. And its true but the level of rain is shown as moderate. That translates to light drizzle here on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.
Just shows that the US National Weather Service I relied upon should stay national. Another DOGE opportunity.
Australia’s dam “capacity added” peaked in the 1970s.
Very little capacity has been added in the last few decades.
Most major cities now struggle for fresh water when we get a prolonged dry period.
Eric,
Instead of 2013 pictures, how about some actual 2025 facts? Did the Brisbane dams overflow? No. Was there ever any danger that they would overflow? Wivenhoe is a huge reservoir (1.165 ML capacity), now 86.7% full.
This is a developing situation. There is a once in a decade storm outside my home right now, and 4 inches of water in my back yard. The thunder sounds like an artillery battle. So somewhere is going to flood.
It seems remarkably localised. But nothing to do with Brisbane’s dam management.
Not really. If that rain over Brisbane sweeps another
10km50km North West, it will be right over the Wivenhoe Dam’s catchment area.Notwithstanding that it is bucketing down at your place Eric, note the scale. Blue is moderate and less. That roughly equates to drizzle.
Cyclones and their immediate remnants tend to do that.
If you look at the 256km rain radar for Gympie, you’ll see the semi-circular rain band. The low is centred a bit west of Gympie at present.
Wide Bay and Burnett isn’t the appropriate area for observations, Southeast Coast is. Luckily, it hasn’t rained a real lot yet; only 100mm (4″) for the previous 24 hours.
Remarkably localised is not the words I would use for a 500- 600 kilometer event in this area. Lismore looks like it will flood again- an event that has occurred every 14 months on average since it was settled. Brisbane is likely also to flood with the severity depending on the tides. The city is rather stupidly built on a flood plain which is precisely why the whole area is so fertile – think Nile Valley! But a lot of people live there now and the summer storms tend to fall on the flood plain rather than the dam catchment areas. And we have politicians with the IQ of a gnat overriding the engineers who know what they are talking about. WE go through a lot of drinking water in this sub-tropical city where rain does not fall all year round. Hence concerns about the storing and release of water. But it is all ok. there is a desalination plant on the Gold Cost. Pity it is rusted out and largely inoperative.
“Remarkably localised “
When you get 224 mm in Hervey Bay and nothing at all in Maryborough, Bundaberg or Gympie – well, what would you call it?
“unprecedented”?
Probably a malfunction of the automatic reporting system.
I live in central Ohio.
A couple of decades ago friends had 5 inches of rain.
I live about 5 miles away.
My house had a drizzle.
(They lived less than a mile from the water plant I worked at. Our plant reported our rainfall to the NWS.)
Mr. Stokes: Like so many climate change events, remarkably localized. Best thing to do is average them, don’t you think?
Probably somewhere down hill. But wait, Albo was there hoping for an opportunity to save his people – uphill might have been possible … /s
86.7% is the current ‘drinking water’ capacity. It has another 100+% flood mitigation capacity so in reality it is currently less than 50% ‘full’.
If the remnants of Cyclone Arnold dump 3ft of water in the catchment like Cyclone Oswald did, they will have to deal with a lot of water pouring into their dam very quickly.
Forecasts for Brisbane last time I checked are just under 3ft of rain in a couple of days.
Few centers around Brisbane got more then 100mm of rain in the last 24 hours (to 9am) – Greenbank and Redladns maxed-out at 105mm.
The cyclone has spread into a rain depression. While much of the rain is falling over the ocean, over land the cloud bands appear to be heading south. Whether rainfall will increase over already saturated catchments north and west of Brisbane remains to be seen.
As Albo has left the scene (and so has the PLA-N ship convoy) the political pitter-patter seems to have eased.
Bill
Sure you don’t mean 3″ ?
Weatherzone say 40-80mm today and decreasing over the next few days.
Brisbane Weather Forecast | Today’s Local Weather Forecast
“Forecasts for Brisbane last time I checked are just under 3ft of rain in a couple of days.”
Here is the latest:
Yep – lucky this time. The cyclone weakened substantially before moving inland.
Looks like Brisbane is getting more rain than forecast.
Here is the region forecast:
“in reality it is currently less than 50% ‘full’”
Yes, huge capacity! I think it is actually about 30% full.
2013 proved they can be overwhelmed.
Eric,
I think you’re getting mixed up with 2011. Your 2013 links are mainly about trouble around Bundaberg (Burnett River). The Brisbane dams did not cause trouble. They are building a new bigger dam on the Burnett.
They follow a more conservative policy since 2011, which has nowhere near failed this time.
I was in Brisbane in 2013 Nick, I took the left hand photo of Colleges Crossing at the top of this article. Brisbane also had severe floods in 2011, but I wasn’t there at the time.
Nowhere in the Brisbane River catchment had 3 ft of rain from cyclone Oswald. And flooding in Brisbane was not caused by the release of water from the Brisbane dams in 2013 (which was ordered by the Premier).
I call BS. The photo I took of Colleges Crossing doesn’t fully convey the immense flow of water which replaced the quiet trickle which normally flows. The roar was so loud I wouldn’t have been able to use my phone where I was standing. I’m sure other runoff contributed, but there was plenty of news about the dam releasing. I went down to Colleges Crossing to take the photo because I watched the news about the release.
Don’t forget, the people interviewed are the same people who are trying to defend their track record of not doing anything substantial about flood risk.
The dam release was directly ordered by the Premier, Campbell Newman. But there was no major flooding in Brisbane that year:
Nor was there 3 feet of rain in the catchment. Max about 400 mm
As of 8am on Sunday 9th March , the rain event is still mostly to the south of the Wivenhoe Dam (catchment to the North of it). There’s only a handful of dams in the area currently receiving the heavy rain, most of which are already full. Any release from Wivenhoe now would just add to the problems downstream for no good reason.
Incoming rain bands mostly travelling NNE to SSW. Wivenhoe is to the left of the map, about 1/3 of the way down the pic.
The BoM pressure forecast shows the centre of the low inland of Gympie, then forming a trough by tonight.
The Gympie rain radar shows that quite nicely, with a semi-circle of rain out to sea, and over Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
Absolutely, Wivenhoe might get lucky this time. But the rain is torrential, it’s likely to last for days, and there is still plenty of opportunity for it to hit the catchment.
My point is it is way too late to perform an emergency release when the flood is already pouring into your catchment.
Eric, where on the BOM radar is the rain torrential? All I see is a big blog of blue (moderate or less) and the odd splash of yellow (normal rainfall).
Again, no-one is looking at the actual state of the Wivenhoe (or others) dam. SEQwater policy is to aim for 90% full. Wivenhoe has 86.7% of its 1.176 ML reserved for water supply. It probably won’t even reach 90%. But it also has an extra 2.2 ML reserve capacity for flood control.
These are big dams!
These are big storms. In 2013 Cyclone Oswald forced an emergency release which contributed to flooding of central Brisbane. It is entirely possible something like that could happen again, if not this time then next time.
You have the wrong units, Nick. Those should be million ML (GL)
Yep, it’s a big dam. The flood mitigation capacity is about the same as Warragamba Dam’s total capacity. Don’t forget that it filled rather quickly and needed an emergency release in 2013, so the catchment must be quite large. It will probably get over 90% if there’s decent rain in the catchment, but probaly won’t fill a lot of the flood mitigation reserve.
Yes, OC, I’m doing badly with units today 🙁 ( tho I think a million ML is a TL).
Warragama didn’t fill from empty
That makes at least 2 of us 🙁
Well, strictly it did, but that started in about 1960 when the diversion tunnels were sealed.
It went from 80% to spilling pretty quick-smart in heavy rain a few years back, but it’s been sitting at over 90% for a good while now.
Unless something very unusual happens in the next week or so, Wivenhoe isn’t likely to get much over 100%.
CSIRO are quoted as saying
The Bureau of Meteorology’s satellite record is relatively short and there have been changes in the historical methods of analysis. Combined with the high variability in tropical cyclone numbers and influences of natural variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, it makes it difficult to attribute trends to any single factor.
and yet when it comes to climate change, it seems to be so easy to attribute trends to man-made CO2. Strange.
They have “faith” in their models… ?
For those interested, Wibvenhow now have a webcam:
ccef2b42-a849-435e-8dbd-6fef8731c6b9
The camera is panning (I think automatically because there are no controls on the page).
At present there is no release but it is overcast.
The rain depression is now moving slowly Northeast and still bringing in lots of water from the Pacific.
The Wivenhoe dam level has not risen much sop far but the catchment is only now getting some rain.
About 300,000 homes in SEQ and northern NSW are without power. Lots of lodged trees primarily because councils have strict rules on trimming trees and lots of soaking rain. Some places have recorded 700mm in the last few days.
What an awesome find, thanks Rick.
I remember vividly in about 1983 I was given a tour into the very bowels of the still under-construction Wivenhoe dam wall.
(my company was doing the project financial accounting)
Admit I got bit disconcerted seeing the number and volume of water leaks coming out of the concrete walls and running through the channels cut into the floor before discharging out of the wall into the downstream side of the wall.
I was assured that this is situation normal inside concrete dam walls.
How we’ve come to trust engineers 🙂
I’m just waiting for the first media report claiming that cyclone Alfred was “unprecedented” in some or other aspect.
For a dose of reality / perspective, I offer a visual about cyclones in Northern Australia.
(note – this only covers 1906 – 2006. Many events both before and after this period)
I linked one of them in the article, they didn’t say the word “unprecedented”, they used the word “supercharged”. Then the cyclone fizzled.
My daughter lives somewhere between Wivenhoe Dam and the coast.
Not much wind or heavy rain their over the last couple, I’m sure she will let ‘the fam’ know by messenger if it gets really wet.
With the amount of fear mongering surrounding it, they should have named it Cyclone Afraid, not Cyclone Alfred.
Unprecedented hype!
As I posted on jonova…
Energex has an excellent outage finder at https://www.energex.com.au/outages/outage-finder/outage-finder-map/
The short summary in Qld is that there is a staggering patchwork of outages from Caboolture down to the border.
And unusually enough their ABC has a useful summary of rainfall at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-08/cyclone-alfred-wind-speeds-and-rainfall-tracker/105023404
For propaganda purposes their ABC actually shows rainfall totals over 3 days from Wednesday morning. Highlights include 5.6mm at Sunshine Coast airport and 161mm at Brisbane airport. And to repeat that is a THREE DAY TOTAL.
A point of interest is the BOM rain radar which shows a HUGE area covered by rain. And its true but the level of rain is shown as moderate. That translates to light drizzle here on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.
Having been through Larry in Cairns and Yasi in Townsville all I can say is I wish all cyclones were like this one!
Australia would rather waste money building power lines to the middle of nowhere to feed the renewable fantasy than spend any spare cash burying powerlines underground, where they would be much safer from storm damage.
When I used to live in a semi rural area we had power outages all the time, invariably because someone’s giant tree fell over in a storm and wrecked the line.
Yes and yes. A sensible analysis of the resilience of power lines would surely point to putting them underground especially in areas vulnerable to storm damage. In the meantime people get stroppy when the power company trims trees.
Expansion of underground power lines is very expensive. If the area is prone to development, leaving them aboveground is better.
How expensive is very expensive? There are lots of building estates with underground power.
Absolutely – but then you need to accept the enhanced power interruption risk.
CSIRO… ”Cyclones should be increasing but they’re not”
Lol. Back to the drawing board dudes.
Time to dig out the past history to put things into perspective.
One example, ‘The Great Gold Coast Cyclone’
“On 20 February 1954, a tropical cyclone crossed over Coolangatta. While the cyclone occurred when weather patterns were unnamed, it was unofficially given the title The Great Gold Coast Cyclone. Serious structural damage to buildings occurred in Brisbane, Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast.
A 0.64 m storm surge was recorded in Moreton Bay while at Beachmere the surge was much higher. Waves at Kirra brought 3 m of water onto the highway washing cars from the road.
As a result of the heavy rain, flooding which combined with the storm surge in the Nerang River caused many evacuations in the area, including people from MacIntosh Island.
Severe flooding also occurred in areas of New South Wales; Cudgen, Casino, Lismore, Murwillumbah, Grafton, Maclean, Clarence, Yamba, Kyogle and Bryon Bay.
The worst-hit areas were reported as Lismore, Casino, Kyogle, and Murwillumbah. The Richmond River rose approximately 1 m above the record 1949 flood level. Impacts to these areas included several thousand people displaced, crop and stock losses, residential and commercial premises damaged, and roads and other infrastructure destroyed.
In Byron Bay, the outer section of the jetty was swept away taking 22 vessels with it . The storm surge moved through Bryon Bay and flooded parts of the town.
The Bureau of Meteorology reports between 26 to 30 people died as a result of the flooding, severe winds and storm surges.”
This was in 1954, when the population was only about 500,000 in Brisbane. Today it is over 2.5 million.
Digging further back in history, we have the devastating SE Queensland floods of 1893, caused in part by tropical cyclone Buninyong (named after the ship which first reported it.)
The 1893 Brisbane flood, occasionally referred to as the Great Flood of 1893 or the Black February flood, occurred in 1893 in Brisbane Queensland, Australia. The Brisbane River burst its banks on three occasions in February 1893. It was the occurrence of three major floods in the same month that saw the period named “Black February”.
Link here at Wikipedia
1893 Brisbane flood
I was just a kid in grade 2 when that cyclone arrived in Brisbane.
Our family had to evacuate our house in the middle of the night and wade to higher ground with relatives as the water rose.
We kids weren’t scared though – this was not our first rodeo.
Low systems, flooding, power outages and clean-ups were a regular feature of our childhood.
(someone will along any moment to say – “loooxury!” )
I’m still waiting for this 1m of rain in 24hrs peddled by the media. This is no more than the usual heavy summer monsoon events. Tough that worst of it went south into NSW but have you seen the level of their flood mitigation? Well, neither have I.
It isn’t peddled by the media. It is peddled by Eric. Right here.
Eric probably had the same order of magnitude muddling as the rest of us 🙁
Brisbane had another 150+ mm (6″) overnight on top of 100 mm the day before, so a quarter of a meter so far.
I’m a Brisbane resident currently sitting here at home in Carina listening to the non-stop heavy rain on Sunday night. The creek near the villa complex where I live has overflowed and there is a lot of flooding nearby which should not directly threaten us, but the sooner the rain stops, the better. However, I know this isn’t because of climate change. I’m not sure if it’s because of the dams either (although we could certainly do with more of them). A similar thing happened three years ago when the road and parkland near us flooded badly because of the creek and Minnippi Lake nearby.
And because of the weather, not climate change.
The very late release of the dam waters that caused so much enormous damage was actually in 2011. Cyclone Oswald came two years later. The rain was mainly due to a slow-moving low hovering off the coast. By Friday afternoon it was obvious to most engineers that water releases had to begin then but the dominant narrative at the BOM and in the Qld Labor Govt was that climate change meant that, in the word of Climate Commissioner (and all-round nutjob) Tim Flannery, ” Even the rain that does fall won’t fill the dams.” Having just come out of a 9-year drought with severe water restrictions having only just been lifted, the dam operators and the Govt were terrified of ending up in the same situation. Hence, they delayed the release until the worst possible time.
I don’t blame the dam engineers as they were acting under ministerial orders. For years, they had managed a delicate balancing act between the two opposing demands made on Wivenhoe Dam but this could not be sustained forever without making an error of judgement.
As for the current situation, virtually all the damage occurred after the cyclone was downgraded to a storm early Saturday morning. The powerful winds (up to 104kmh in my locale) and the heavy rains came late Saturday evening, leading to flooding on Sunday. I had been saying all week that the threat was not the cyclone (which struggled to get to Cat 2) but the following low should it hang around just off the coast. That is exactly what it did.
Our geniuses in the BOM have failed us again.
P.S. Anyone who lived here between 1967-1977 will have lived through numerous more severe cyclones in SE Queensland. It is not as unusual as people think but we all tend to forget such events as they blur into the past.