AppId is over the quota
A man clears out a popular bar on the banks of the Yarra river in Southbank after floodwaters broke the banks. Photograph: David Crosling/AAP Melburnians experienced the rare sight of the Yarra river bursting its city banks on Tuesday after strong winds and rain lashed the Victorian capital.
The Yarra breached its banks at Southbank, flooding footpaths and cycle routes and swelling to the extent that it came close to touching the bottom of the Queen Street bridge. Ponyfish Island, a bar which normally floats on the Yarra, has been swamped.
The Bureau of Meteorology said that while Melbourne has experienced 7.88mm of rain over the past 24 hours, rainfall “hasn’t been torrential.” The swelling of the Yarra has been primarily caused by winds of over 100 km/h, which, in an unusual phenomenon, pushed water from Port Phillip Bay back up the river, virtually causing it to flow in the wrong direction.
“The water builds up into the mouth of the Yarra and it has burst its banks, which it something I don’t recall happening in some time,” Terry Ryan, senior forecaster at the BoM, told Guardian Australia. “You need a lot of things to happen for this to occur. You don’t get westerly winds pushing water up the Yarra very often.”
Ryan said the wind reached speeds of 111 km/h in St Kilda on Tuesday morning, with strong gusts lasting for two hours.
“Those gusts have only just backed off,” he said. “Certainly at Docklands, the water level is the highest we’ve seen in a while. Things will improve in the next few days, showers will become more isolated and while we might have a weather warning again later this week, it won’t be as severe as this.”
A front of low pressure from the Bass Strait has caused the cold, windy and wet weather in South Australia and Victoria, with the front moving into NSW. The front has caused 82mm of rain at Falls Creek in Victoria’s high country, while winds have battered Melbourne and coastal areas.
Victoria’s State Emergency Service said it has received more than 2,000 requests for assistance across the state since midnight, with more than 700 reports of trees falling down and a further 700 reports of buildings damaged.
A total of 79,500 houses across Victoria are without power due to the severe weather conditions.
An SES spokeswoman told Guardian Australia that the flooded Yarra was “not a serious concern at the moment” but that the situation was being monitored.
She added that a number of dangerous incidents have taken place across the state, including a fish and chip shop wall collapsing in Warrnambool, a school building roof ripped away in Apollo Bay and reports of garden sheds cartwheeling down streets in suburban Melbourne.
Meanwhile, the wind caused trucks and even a shipping container to overturn, while the foreshore at Williamstown was swamped by a storm surge. A woman in her 60s suffered minor injuries after she hit by a falling wall in Yarraville, a day after Michael Klanja, a father of two, was killed when a brick wall collapsed on him at Brighton East due to strong winds.
Metro Trains has reported disruptions to train services on four train lines in Melbourne as a result of the weather.
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