Grey nomads travelling in regional South Australia have been battening down the hatches record-breaking rains have continued to cause havoc in the state’s north and west.
The weather bureau said some locations had set ‘all-time records’ in terms of rainfall, while the ABC reports that social media is awash with photos and videos of inundated highways.
An entire section of the Olympic Dam Highway was eroded, blocking access between the towns of Woomera and Roxby Downs.
“The road’s completely washed out. The bitumen is not there anymore,” said Pei Stephenson, who manages Spud’s Roadhouse in Pimba. “It’s definitely busier than the last week or so with people stuck in here, because normally they would keep going, but now they can’t go anywhere.”
The State Emergency Service (SES) has also been inundated with jobs, late yesterday reporting that it had been called upon to rescue 11 people who found themselves stuck ‘trapped by floodwaters’.
The SES’s Coober Pedy unit told the BAC that it initially responded to a request for assistance by two people on Kempe Road, connecting Coober Pedy with Oodnadatta.
“While coming up with a plan to rescue occupants of the car, an additional nine people got stuck at the same location,” the unit wrote on Facebook. “Unfortunately due to road conditions we were unable to reach them, supplies were dropped by … [a] search and rescue aircraft, all 11 people made it safely to town.”
Another SES crew said it had been called upon to rescue a driver who was washed from the Outback Highway in the northern Flinders Ranges near Beltana.
Several warnings, including for severe thunderstorms and a flood watch, are current for parts of the state.
A driver in the northern Flinders Ranges near Beltana needed to be rescued. PIC: Facebook: Coober Pedy Mine /ABC Rescue/SES)
“We’ve seen seven all-time records up until this point through the Eyre Peninsula largely,” Senior meteorologist Paul Lainio, told the ABC. “Falls of anywhere between, say, 80 to 90 millimetres to over 150mm in a 24-hour period. Those locations have never seen falls of that amount.”
Cowell recorded 181mm, with 165mm at Buckleboo and 160mm in the grey nomad-friendly town of Kimba. Other locations to set new records included Darke Peak, Mount Ive, Wirrulla and Cleve.
Mr Lainio said moisture had been ‘pouring in from the tropics’ and was being drawn into a trough and ‘turned into rain and thunderstorms’.
“It’s very unusual for that humidity to push down into the southern states, and South Australia is one of the driest states,” he told the ABC. “Whenever you have such humidity, a thunderstorm might develop and you’ll get localised heavy impacts.”
We experienced something similar in Wilpena Sound in approxiamately 1994. Rain volume was not as high as this event but the creeks came up that quickly that all roads either bitumen or dirt were closed