[Sixstrings]

BRISBANE, Australia — Greg Kowald was driving through the center of Toowoomba when a terrifying, tsunami-like wall of water roared through the streets of the northeast Australian city.

Office windows exploded, cars careened into trees and bobbed in the churning brown water like corks. The deluge washed away bridges and sidewalks; people desperately clung to power poles to survive. Before it was over, the flash flood left at least 10 dead and 78 missing.
"The water was literally leaping, six or 10 feet into the air, through creeks and over bridges and into parks," Kowald, a 53-year-old musician, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "There was nowhere to escape, even if there had been warnings. There was just a sea of water about a kilometer (half a mile) wide."

The violent surge in Toowoomba brought the overall death toll from weeks of flooding in Queensland state to 20, a sudden acceleration in a crisis that had been unfolding gradually with swollen rivers overflowing their banks and inundating towns while moving toward the ocean. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said there were "grave fears" for at least 18 of those missing.

The high waters headed next to Australia's third-largest city, Brisbane, where up to 9,000 homes were expected to be swamped. The Brisbane River overflowed its banks Tuesday and officials warned that dozens of low-lying neighborhoods and parts of downtown could be inundated in coming days.

But nothing downstream was expected to be as fierce as the flash flood that struck Toowoomba on Monday. It was sparked by a freak storm — up to 6 inches (150 millimeters) fell in half an hour.
"There was water coming down everywhere in biblical proportions," Toowoomba council member Joe Ramia told the AP.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40996681/ns/world_news-asiapacific/?GT1=43001

Was surprised to see this.. they'd just had those other floods, I didn't realize this was an ongoing problem.

Condolences to the Aussies on this forum.. hopefully none of you live near any of this.

[sparky]

.
Toowoomba got hit while they already were soaked wet , it's high in the catchment area
the water fell like buckets, some familly could not even go out the door of their house ,
they had to dig themselves out by the ceiling .
the witnesses said it was no flood , it was a 6feet Tsunami ,
news footage of the damage confirm it ,
78 missing presumed dead , the town got washed out -
.........and it still raining !!

[SeaGypsy]

Deforestation would have accelerated the flowspeed of course. I am 100% sure the reason southern WA has ever decreasing rainfall is the stripping of 96% of the primordial forest in the south west; but you never hear any WA gov folks talking about that. Idiots. 200 ft trees were mulched for cardboard down there for decades.

I already posted this vid on another flood thread here, it shows what happened in Toowoomba:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/11/3110493.htm

Obviously the people filming had no idea there were people in some of those cars...

Some more of the aftermath and continuing saga...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/12/3110953.htm

[kiwichick]

currently more than 90 missing

[ozkrenske]

Greetings from a Toowoomba resident.

First up Toowoomba sits on the crest of the great dividing range. It is essentially a City (100k) that sits with two small creeks that drain together out the northern edge of town. What we have had is 6 weeks of soaking rain flooding 2/3rds of Queensland but no flooding in Toowoomba. But then Monday afternoon happened, with a widespread 6 inch rain drop in about 40 minutes. East and West creek normally drain along cement lined courses 2 feet across and 2 feet deep with a little water flow. The rain caused these creeks/open drains too near instantly leap to 15+ feet depth that overspilled the creek bounderies and flooded the business district, swept hundreds of cars away and killed 5-6 people in carried away cars. Two hours later the water was dropping away pretty quickly. This water will eventually reach the Murray river mouth in approximately 6 months time. The flood surge will slowly and remorslessly flow the length of NSW and Victoria dropping only 700 meters over the 4000 km course of the river basin.

At the same time on the coast side of the range the huge rain drop ran down the escarpment and flash flooded many small towns in the Lockyer valley. It is there that whole towns were inundated nearly without warning. This has killed many but the bodies have not yet been found. Houses floated away with people in them, occupied cars slamming into bridges and then being found empty. Not good chances for many of the missing.

After this the rain kept up quite heavily and the whole Brisbane catchment area began flooding the Brisbane river. Peaking was today a little down on the previous long term record. Still 10's of thousands of properties flooded in Brisbane on Thursday morning.

The most interesting report was the flood report for Gatton in the lockyer. "Water hit 22.5 meters above normal, 4 meters higher than the 1887 record and then the gauging equipment failed. Exact flood depths are unknown." The equipment was destroyed by the flood which went from normal flow to beyond record in lockyer creek in the space of 15 minutes. Grantham a hamlet of 400, only 5 km from Gatton on the creek, was only about 10 meters above normal creek hight. The hamlet was devastated.

The rest of Queensland is being affected by very widespread slow flowing floods. Weeks of flooding across an area greater than the size of Great Britain. The mid term weather forecast is still for heavy rain and above average falls across Queensland for another 3 months due to Ocean temperatures and the La nina climate pattern.

The now long term travel and shipping problems is causing serious shortages of various foods and fuel across large regions. We are shipping av gas by air so helicopters can distribute diesel to keep generators at hospitals in cut off towns running. It is ammusing in an 'interesting times' way to live trough this at the moment.

Probably the world has 6 months of severely reduced Australian coal, LNG and food exports. Probably a 2-3% hit to the whole Aussie GDP for the year.