Weekend rainfall breaks SA records as flooding videos emerge
Parts of South Australia are underwater following some regions being hit with record rainfall across the weekend, claiming the life of one man. See the videos from the Riverland and Flinders Ranges.
Sam May, a wheat, barley and lentil farmer 15 kilometres south of Loxton in Pata, said a deluge of weekend rain flooding his property was a “phenomenal event to witness”.
“I’ve never seen it like that, mum and dad have never seen it, and nanna and pop haven’t seen it like this since the 70s,” May said.
“It was a welcome rain, but we’ve had a bit of a flooding issue around my house. We’re just in process of starting to clean that up now.
“With it being so dry and a drought any rain is welcome, but it was a bit excessive in four or five hours.”
Footage taken of the Murray Mallee property shows the extent of the flash flooding on Saturday, with the property sited nowhere near any waterways.
“It’s not particularly catastrophic damage, but obviously wet or wrecked crusher dust and gardens but no physical damage to buildings or anything that we’ve noticed yet,” May said.
Data from the Bureau of Meteorology showed that Loxton saw 56mm of rainfall in 24-hours from 9am on Saturday to 9am Sunday — the region’s highest March monthly rainfall on record.
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Loxton saw 82mm total across the three days while surrounding towns Berri and Renmark also picked up 64mm.
BOM data showed that the Riverland wasn’t the only area of the state to receive torrential rain, with areas in the mid-north and Flinders Ranges hit the worst.
“We saw this heavy rainfall up in the far northeast of the state as far back as a week ago, but it was over the weekend where the more populated areas through the state saw this rainfall move through,” a BOM spokesperson said.
Oodnadatta has been left a sea of buckets and tarps after being hit in an inland big wet that claimed the life of one man.
The 47-year-old motorbike rider went missing after trying to cross a flooded creek at Eurelia, in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges on Sunday morning.
His body was later recovered as severe weather warnings and flash flooding alerts remain across the region and for much of Australia’s inland south-east.
The deluge exposed the lack of weather proofing at the historic Pink Roadhouse, which is in SA’s arid north on the famous Oodnadatta Track.
The dirt car park out front of the Oodnadatta food stop was a muddy quagmire by Sunday. Locals report they haven’t seen such rain since the 1980s.
Nicole Castagnaro’s Sunday shift was spent emptying the 30-plus buckets and containers dotted throughout the store as the rain kept falling and the roof kept leaking.
“There’s no one around at all,” she said.
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“The roads are closed, we’re running out of food, and if the trucks can’t get through, we’ll be stuck eating baked beans for the foreseeable future.”
Oodnadatta had nearly 18 millimetres of rain overnight into Sunday – or more than 10 per cent of its average annual rainfall of 171 millimetres.
It’s been so long since the tracks flooded, most locals have no idea what happens next if food can’t be delivered to the tiny town and its population of 102.
“We can’t live on just beans, but I don’t know if the military will airlift supplies – I guess we’ll find out,” Castagnaro said.
There’s no immediate end in sight to the huge storm system as it passes through central Australia, bringing widespread downfalls and flash flooding.
Braemar Station, located 75 kilometres north-east of Burra, recorded the heaviest weekend rainfall with 203.6mm including a 24-hour rainfall record of 149mm on Saturday.
The BOM said flash flooding was prevalent north of Adelaide in the Flinders Ranges and Gammon Ranges.
Moolooloo Station owners in the far-northern Flinders Ranges have been forced to delay sheep shearing due to the downpour.
In a video posted to their Facebook page on Sunday, flash floods can be seen destroying a flood gate on the property.
A BOM spokesperson said regions north-east of Adelaide also recorded significant rainfall, with 175mm hitting Yunta across the weekend.
“All of last year Yunta picked up 158mm, so in two days they saw more rainfall than they saw all of last year,” the spokesperson said.
Areas of the Eyre Peninsula were also drenched, with weekend totals in Minnipa reaching 150.4 mm and Wudinna airport 108.8.
“Large parts of the state saw this rainfall and probably the only place that missed out was basically Adelaide,” the BOM spokesperson said.
– with AAP
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