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Nature’s lash
After one of the most intense dust storms in decades, a second cloud swept through NSW and Queensland on Saturday, with satellite pictures showing a 200km-wide band of dust moving east from central Australia.
In Queensland, the dust spread from the state’s southeast to Cairns in the far north, with the town of Surat experiencing 200m visibility, the lowest in the state.
Weather bureau forecaster Ben Annels said people had received more warning of the second wave than they had for the first, and had been able to take appropriate measures well in advance.
Strong winds caused disruptions at airports, with passengers on flights in and out of Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast experiencing long delays. A Qantas spokesman said strong westerly winds meant aircraft were limited to the use of Sydney’s east-west runway only.
In Victoria’s alpine region, it was snow, not dust, that was circulating in the air, with four people becoming stranded in blizzard conditions in Avon Wilderness Park, north of Traralgon, on Saturday night. The three women and a man decided to leave their vehicle after it broke down.
But with snow down to 700m or 800m in some areas, and blizzard conditions overnight, rescue teams were concerned for the group’s safety.
The four were found and transferred to rescue vehicles yesterday, and were expected to be brought to Licola, northeast of Melbourne, last night, after the group used a mobile phone to call triple-O early yesterday morning.
On Saturday, grass fires burning in southeast Queensland were slowly brought under control, with the Queensland Fire & Rescue Service advising that no homes near Woodford or Stony Creek were under threat.
A blaze in a pine plantation at Mount Tamborine, south of Brisbane, and another at Sandstone Point, near Bribie Island, had also been contained, with the QFRS backburning in both areas.
In Western Australia, 2km off the coastal community of Gracetown, south of Perth, former world qualifying series surfer Mark Visser tackled some of the biggest waves of the year at the Cow Bombie break.
He said the problem wasn’t that the waves were too big — even though some were reaching heights of 15m — but rather that they could have been bigger.
“It wasn’t really as big as we had hoped it might be,” he said. “Had the wind been coming at it from a different direction, it would have been a lot bigger.”
In Tasmania, strong and gusty winds teamed with torrential rain yesterday to wash jetties away — and a yacht ashore — at Drew Point at Margate, south of Hobart, with SES teams responding to dozens of calls related to flood damage in coastal areas around Carlton, Dodges Ferry, Lewisham and the Huon Valley.
The weather bureau yesterday said that winds of 124km/h had been recorded at the Hartz Mountains in the south, the most fierce in the state, and warned that winds powerful enough to bring down power lines and tree branches would continue.
Picture: ABC