Updated
An emergency alert has been issued for rising floodwaters in the Daintree as a monsoon trough continues to dump torrential rain on Far North Queensland.
Residents of Douglas Shire received an alert just before midnight warning them properties would likely be inundated by floodwaters.
“People living in the vicinity need to take appropriate action and consider moving to higher ground where possible,” the message read.
Douglas Shire Mayor Julia Leu said there had been a “tremendous” amount of rain in the last 48 hours.
“The Daintree River has exceeded the level that we knew about in 1996, which was 11.8 metres, and it has got up to 12.6, which is beating the 1901 record of 12.4,” she said.
“Power at the moment is out throughout Daintree, and Ergon is waiting for it to be safe so that they can helicopter in and send more crews, and we’ve still got some Telstra issues as well.”
“The good news is that today the forecast is for showers, but not heavy rain and … as of now the water levels are receding.”
The weather bureau said the tropical low in the far north would continue dumping heavy rain over the coming days.
Senior forecaster Gabriel Branescu said a severe weather warning had been issued for the area south of Cooktown to the Whitsundays.
“Heavy rainfall will continue especially over the north tropical coast and perhaps may even track south over the central coast over the coming days, so it will be a continuation of heavy falls, really wet days ahead,” he said.
“The trough is causing rainfall, especially over the north tropical coast. As a result we are looking at rivers rising, so Daintree River now is major flooding, also minor and moderate flooding into the north tropical coast around Cairns.”
A severe weather warning remains in place for a large stretch of the coast between Cairns and the Whitsundays and the adjacent inland area.
The weather bureau warned some isolated areas could get up to 250mm of rain in the space of six hours.
The State Emergency Service (SES) said it had responded to 80 calls in Far North Queensland after the very heavy rain in the region.
SES North Queensland regional director Wayne Coutts said with the rain due to ease today, the workload would become more manageable.
“[There are] 20 [call-outs] since this morning that are still outstanding — probably most of those though are in the Cairns area — there’s a few in Mosman but in the Cairns area there’s a few little land slips and that sort of stuff out of people’s back yards.”
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