The events of the past few days have awakened many to the realisation that we do in fact live in a climate that is susceptible to events of severe weather here on the central coast of New South Wales. The most frequented comment i have heard, read or had conversed to me is that the weather of Friday 8 June 2007 reminded them of particular weather events of the late 80's and early 90's.

The past 6-7 years has been relatively quiet weather wise. Sure their has been the odd storm, but we have been very lucky across the Sydney basin as a whole that we haven't experienced that broad scale events that were witnessed in the Hunter. However, there will be a time in the not too distant future that Sydney will be faced with the threat of flood. We have had no major flood event for the past 7 years and nothing on the scale the flood years of 1989-1992. When these weather systems do finally happen again, many more communities will face impending danger of destruction than ever before. In the past 15 years the population of the Sydney basin has skyrocketed - with many lush suburban estates built on those very floodplains that absorbed the runoff would be suburbia of 89-92.

The event of Friday was truly a first in my 20 years of weather wathcing. It is rare to see a extra tropical (i.e. non tropical) cyclone form and cross the coast like the one on Friday (all low pressure systems are cyclones of sorts - we tend to only call and relate to the word 'cyclone' as an intense tropical windstorm). We sometimes see this happen when a tropical cyclone makes landfall over a populated area with a radar - but to see it happen in Newcastle of all places with a extra-tropical system was extraodinary. You can see here that the eye is clearly visible as it crosses the coast.

Michael Bath at Australian Severe Weather has put together this great satellite loop of the entire event - from the upper trough in SE QLD right through to the low of Newcastle.

Included in this presentation from SMH is some excellent photos by Nick Moir of the devestation caused by the floods.  

Some interesting YouTube vids here and here re: floods here.