Australia Weather News

A sodden day awaits south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales in the fallout of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, with alerts out for potential flooding.

While clean-up attempts might start, hundreds of schools remain closed on Monday in both regions.

Rainfalls of up to 80 millimetres are forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, while 50mm could fall in Grafton, where eyes have been on the local Clarence River.

The weather will add to struggles with restoring power with more than 233,000 residences and businesses lacking electricity on Monday morning. 

That has also spilled over to telecommunications breakdowns impacting more than 100,000 mobile phone and internet services on Sunday.

Sue Oates from the BOM on Sunday predicted that conditions would ease for eastern Australia by Tuesday.

But she warned the event is "still not over".

"The risk of intense rainfall with localised flash flooding is real," she said.

Ms Oates as well said the situation was different to flooding in south-east Queensland and northern NSW.

"In 2022, we had four days of persistent heavy rainfall across the Brisbane River catchment, and we don't have that prolonged rainfall for this event," she said.

Many schools remain shut, power out

Queensland's government had left schools in the region to decide whether to reopen on Monday, with more than 1,000 shut as the cyclone approached late last week.

More than 680 state, independent and Catholic schools were listed as closed across the state as of Monday morning. 

In northern NSW, more than 290 schools are to be closed until at least Tuesday with NSW's education department saying it was anticipated operations would resume early in the week.

State-owned Energex, which maintains the electricity network in south-east Queensland, was not yet able to provide clear timelines on restoring power, saying that the "huge round two" of wind damage on Saturday night had "put a dent in our damage assessments and restoration planning".

"Power restoration is a trickle-down process: we need to do damage assessments to plan the best approach, then we repair the high voltage network and critical infrastructure before moving onto the street-level low voltage network — there's no point in fixing a pole at the end of a feeder if the high-voltage network supplying it is in on the ground," it said.

Its NSW peer Essential Energy said on Sunday afternoon that 12,500 in the state's north remained without power after the wild weather. 

"Heavy rain and severe winds are continuing to impact the electricity network causing further outages and restricting access to some locations," it said.

'Massive clean-up' ahead

Areas across Queensland have been pounded: Hervey Bay was hit by extensive flash flooding on Sunday, trees toppled, downing powerlines and crashing into homes in Brisbane on Saturday night, and on the Gold Coast beaches eroded and infrastructure was damaged all weekend.

In the NSW town of Kyogle, about 45 kilometres north-west of Lismore, Mayor Danielle Mulholland said people had been flooded in, and authorities would need to inspect and restore access to residents.

"Once the water goes down we'll have a massive clean-up job," she said.

Flood concerns remained in the south-east of Queensland too — with warnings on areas including the Logan and Albert rivers. The bureau warned of possible moderate to major flooding in Beaudesert and Beenleigh, and minor flooding in Brisbane city during high tides on Monday and Tuesday.

Dam releases unlikely

SEQ Water, which is responsible for dams, said on Sunday afternoon it was not planning on spilling water from Wivenhoe Dam, a key piece of infrastructure affecting the Brisbane River. It was at 86 per cent capacity on Sunday.

"Whilst I understand people's anxiety, we will try and give as much notice as we can about anything we would need to do to [for] releases," SEQ Water chief executive Emma Thomas said.

She said the catchments feeding into the dam had not had a lot of rainfall. But she added the weather could change abruptly, so engineers would monitor weather for any required adjustments.

Ms Thomas said the behaviour of weather systems was uncertain.

"It's really important that we don't inadvertently put water into already much higher storm surges and water coming in from others areas that may create other impacts," she said.