The Bureau of Meteorology has assured people in Queensland’s central west looking longingly at the grey clouds above that there’s still a chance of rain.
While Winton has been at the epicentre of this week’s spinoff from the monsoonal weather swamping parts of north Queensland, recording 30.6mm to 4pm on Wednesday, other towns have had virtually no rain yet.
Blackall recorded 2.6mm to 9am Wednesday, Longreach a meagre 0.8mm, and Barcaldine 3.7mm.
BOM forecaster, Harry Clark, said they expected the rain to pick up on Wednesday night and through Thursday before retreating back to the north on Friday.
Read more: Monsoon brings inland rain
“There could be 10 to 30mm over a fairly widespread area and isolated falls of 50mm are possible in thunderstorms, but the chance of that will lessen the further south you are,” he said. “So there is still a chance if people have missed out.”
Mr Clark said the west had largely missed out on any monsoonal influence last summer so it was good to see a trough making itself more generally felt this year.
One of the best places to enjoy this week’s rain has been at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum to the east of Winton, where water runoff creates waterfalls in their canyon.
“It’s the most gorgeous place in the world when it rains,” operations manager, Trish Sloan said.
The museum has had 46mm in the last two days, described as a very good soaking.
Trish wasn’t sure what rain had fallen at Lark Quarry, the other property they are responsible for, south of Winton but said she’d seen pictures on Wednesday afternoon of a downpour.
“People can still get in here unless there’s major flooding but I wouldn’t be attempting to go to the dinosaur stampede (at Lark Quarry) at the moment,” she said.
She was enjoying another benefit of the rain, being out of air-conditioning and breathing fresh air.
Further south, Sue and Pat Hegarty at Colanya had tipped out 49mm by 2pm.
Sue said it had been light misty rain all morning, which was keeping the ground damp.
“It was terrible before this – we had rain in March but then nothing so it was as bad as it’s ever been,” she said.
Starting with a fall of a couple of millimetres on Tuesday afternoon and raining on and off through the night, Sue described it as the most monsoonal type of rain they’d had on the property between Winton and Longreach for around 10 years.
“It seems to have come in south west from Mackay and we were just in the path, from what we could see when the Longreach radar was working,” she said.
The lack of a working radar, just when the wider Longreach region looked like getting rain, has been much noticed by the public.
The BOM’s Harry Clark said technicians were working to bring it back online but he wasn’t sure when that would be.
Meanwhile, national parks in the Winton area, Bladensburg and Diamantina, have been closed to the public.
An environment and science department spokesman said the Winton Shire Council had closed the service road into the former, and that Diamantina NP had been closed as a precaution against the risk of flooding isolating anyone.
He said it hadn’t inconvenienced anyone as no campers were booked in to either park, with daytime temperatures in Diamantina around 46 degrees.
“The heat is keeping users away,” he said.
Sally Gall
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
