This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost Australia, which closed in 2021.

Forced Evacuations And Foam Tides: Dramatic Weather Lashes Australia’s East Coast

Famous beaches swallowed, roads submerged by waterfalls and surf clubs swamped in thick sea foams.
Heavy rain forces evacuations in Australia, but conditions to ease soon.
Channel 7/Reuters
Heavy rain forces evacuations in Australia, but conditions to ease soon.

Border towns between Queensland and New South Wales were on Wednesday assessing the damage after five straight days of wild weather smashed the east coast.

Heavy rains, wild winds and huge seas have forced widespread evacuations as authorities warned of more rainfall, and high tides in the Mid North Coast region in the coming days.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said the heavy rains are expected to weaken by early Wednesday but warned isolated thunderstorms may still generate localised heavy falls triggering flash floods.

As water levels continued to rise in the Northern Rivers area due to the heavy rains Tuesday night, low-lying roads were shuttered and NSW state emergency services directed hundreds of residents of several regional towns to move to safer places.

The cyclonic conditions, generated by an intense low-pressure system off the Queensland coast, have swallowed beaches and submerged large swathes of the heavily populated regions between NSW and Queensland state borders.

Quiet seaside suburbs were battered by the storm with high seas destroying some of the most famous beaches along the coast, including the main beach at popular tourist spot Byron Bay in northern NSW.

Currumbin Surf Club was surrounded by sea.

The storm also whipped up thick sea foams, a rare event, along the beaches in Gold Coast that lured families and children to play in the bubbles, footage on social media showed.

Australia is passing through a summer expected to be dominated by the La Nina phenomenon, typically associated with greater rainfall and more tropical cyclones - a sharp contrast to the massive bushfires that razed the country last summer.

A child plays amongst beach foam in the wake of cyclonic conditions at Currumbin Beach on December 15, 2020, after wild weather lashed Australia's Northern New South Wales and South East Queensland with heavy rain, strong winds and king tides.
AFP /AFP via Getty Images
A child plays amongst beach foam in the wake of cyclonic conditions at Currumbin Beach on December 15, 2020, after wild weather lashed Australia's Northern New South Wales and South East Queensland with heavy rain, strong winds and king tides.

“We’ve been warned by the weather experts that La Nina will have an impact over summer in the eastern coast of Australia so we need to expect the unexpected,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told the ABC.

“I’m hoping what we’ve seen in the last few days won’t be repeated frequently over summer, but it could. Our weather experts tell us they are expecting conditions worse than what we’ve seen in quite a number of years.”

With additional files from Reuters.

Close
This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost Australia. Certain site features have been disabled. If you have questions or concerns, please check our FAQ or contact support@huffpost.com.