Bureau of Meteorology Jess Lingard on the latest weather over Top End

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sarah here with you, filling in for Katie Wolf back
on board for the regular three sixty show tomorrow if
you want to contact us, though, Kathleen is still here.
Eight nine four one one four nine. It has been
a very another very wet few days, and it is
another wet Monday. That's all I seem to be talking

(00:21):
about at the moment. But we're going to do a
catch up with from the Bureau of Meteorology with Senior
Meteorologist Jess Lingard. Good morning, How are you.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Good morning, I'm doing well, Thank you. So wet, so wet,
the understatement of the year.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
How's it going down at the Bureau? You guys would
be fairly busy down there.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, look, it's busy. You know, we're monitoring the rainfall.
We're monitoring the flood levels across the top end, and
you know, we're trying to gaze into our crystal balls
and work out whether or not more rainfall is coming
and how that rainfall may impact the current flooding that
we do have across the top end. There is some
good news that is that the tropical low that has

(01:06):
brought the bulk of this rainfall is dissipating, so it's weakening,
it's becoming less impactful, and the rainfall that we're currently
seeing around the northwest of the top end is moving
slowly offshore, so the bulk of the sort of worst
rainfall is over the water at the moment. We do
still have some persistent showers though across the top end,

(01:28):
and unfortunately they will be lingering around for a little while.
The other piece of good news is that the monsoon
sort of pulsey surge that we've been seeing for the
last week or so is also starting to weaken from tomorrow,
so that does mean little less moisture in the air,
a little less sort of extreme rainfall figures as well.

(01:49):
That's not to say that we're cutting dry now. There
are still going to be showers across the top end
throughout this week, and there are still going to be
pockets of heavy rainfall, and those pockets of heavy rainfall
may have an impact on the current flooding that we
are seeing across the top end, especially along sort of
the Daily and the Catherine Rivers. We have still a

(02:10):
fair number of flood warnings out. We've got the minor
flood warning for the Waterhouse River as a flood warning
out for the Ropa River, but the big ones are
the major flood warning for the Georgina, Georgina River and
Air Creek. We've got the major flood warning for the
Daily River and the major flood warning for the Catherine River.
The latest update to the Catherine River flood warning was

(02:33):
issued less than an hour ago, so at the moment,
Catherine Town, so the Catherine Bridge is currently just around
seventeen point one meters. It is slowly falling, so we
are below the major flood level there. We do have
moderate flooding at the moment, but there was some rainfall
yesterday and that is going to be slowly sort of

(02:54):
moving through the catchment. There is a possibility of renewed
rises to around the major flood level, which is about
seventeen and a half met is overnight tonight and into tomorrow,
and further rises are possible with the forecast rainfall that
we have this week. A little bit further downstream, Catherine
River at Nitmluck Center is currently at around four point

(03:16):
four meters and falling. That has minor flooding on it
at the moment, but once again we've still got some
forecast rainfall across the region. So we could see the
river level rising there up to around the moderate flood
level early tomorrow morning, so that's at about five and
a half meet is the other one that we just

(03:38):
want to quickly touch on is the major flooding at
the Daily River. This is quite a slow river both
to rise and to recede. So while we have seen
the peak of the flooding along the Catherine River, we
have not yet seen the peak along the Daily River,
so that might be might occur this week. We are

(04:00):
likely to be experiencing significant and prolonged major flooding at
the Daily River, especially at the police station there, so
probably going to be still in major flooding through next week.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
So just really quickly, Jess. There's no prediction that it's
going to get as high as what it was, particularly
for that Catherine River.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, so at this stage, look for the Catherine River.
We did peak just around nineteen meters late on Saturday,
So while we're going to be back up above the
sort of the major level, at around the major level,
we're probably still going to be about a meter and
a half below that peak that we saw over the weekend.
So fingers crossed. That's the sort of the bulk of
it done, and that we will slowly see conditions improving

(04:45):
as we are no longer expecting those sort of wide
spread heavy falls.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Do you have any any anything for us to how
long we can expect those river levels to stay that high,
like as high as they are now.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Look, Well, hopefully we just see this renewed rise early
to well overnight tonight or early tomorrow morning, and then
as we start to sort of move through the rest
of the week, we'll continue that sort of slow receding
that we have seen already since Saturday, and that will
just continue and we'll just keep our fingers crossed that
we don't see any sort of isolated pockets of heavy

(05:19):
rainfall around the Catherine area for the rest of this week,
because obviously if we do, then unfortunately that is going
to feed into the river systems. But while we can
forecast the risk of rainfall, we can't tell you exactly
where it's going to fall. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
No, Look, we really appreciate you being able to come
on today, Jess, so thank you so much. And Katie
were back on board tomorrow, so she'll catch up with
you as any updates comes through from the Bureau.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
So thank you perfect. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Senior Meteorologist Jesslingard there from the Bureau of Meteorology, thank
you for joining us. And yeah, just keep in mind
that those advices that are coming through on bomb, keep
yourself across them, and just make sure that we're following
all those emergency procedures as well.