SYDNEY, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Sydney recorded its wettest year in 164 years as severe flooding was reported across eastern Australia on Thursday, with further heavy downpours expected over the next three days.
Australia’s largest city received around 2,213mm of rainfall this year, including Thursday, the first since records began in 1858 and surpassing the previous record of 2,194mm set in 1950, according to official data.
More than 58mm of rain has fallen in five hours since 9 a.m. local time (2200 GMT Wednesday), according to live data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).
More showers are forecast for the rest of 2022 as the east coast of Australia remains in the grip of the La Niña weather phenomenon for the third consecutive year.
“As we approach late spring and summer, we are still in this active La Niña period and so we can expect increasingly heavy rains, which increases the risk of flooding” , BoM forecaster Jonathan How told ABC.
Many dams and rivers are already at capacity. The New South Wales state government has pledged to raise the height of Sydney’s Warragamba Dam, which supplies 80% of the city’s water, to prevent future flooding.
In the past two years, floods have hit Sydney suburbs three times, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
(Reporting Renju Jose and Lewis Jackson; French version Dina Kartit, editing by Kate Entringer)
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