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29 March 2024

Australia's second wettest summer in 111 yrs

Published
By AFP
Australia has experienced its second wettest summer since records began 111 years ago, owing to the unusually strong La Nina weather pattern, meteorologists said Monday.
Across the vast country, parts of which have been ravaged by recent floods and cyclones, the average rainfall for the 2010-2011 summer was 70 percent "above normal" and second only to that of 1973-1974, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
"It was largely due to the strong La Nina event that we have had over the summer," a spokeswoman for the bureau told AFP, referring to the disruptive weather phenomenon associated with rains.
Meteorologist Tom Saunders at The Weather Channel in Australia said although the weather phenomenon had been weakening since January and was now past its peak, the unusually wet weather would likely continue for several months.
"Until the Pacific Ocean returns to neutral in winter, marking the official end of the current La Nina, we can expect above average rain to continue over most of the country," Saunders said in a statement on Monday.
Australia has been hit by four tropical cyclones since January 1 and suffered weeks of devastating flooding which killed 35 people and swamped tens of thousands of homes in northern Queensland state.
The latest tropical cyclone, Carlos, lashed the northwest mining coast last month, damaging dozens of homes and forcing the closure of offshore oil rigs and ports handling iron-ore exports.
It came just two weeks after powerful category five Cyclone Yasi smashed into the northeast tourist coast.
The central bank said last month that the record floods would shear one percentage point off Australia's growth in the March quarter.