From Tokyo: The cyclone season has rarely felt so relentless for the people of Far North Queensland. With more than 300mm of rain falling in a single 24-hour stretch, residents are once again stacking sandbags and watching river gauges climb, even as forecasters warn the season's most serious threat may still be taking shape offshore.
As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, the deluge has prompted authorities to warn communities of a further significant rainfall event in the days ahead. The warning comes at the worst possible moment: after months of punishment from an exceptionally active wet season, catchments across the far north are saturated, rivers are running high, and the land has little capacity to absorb what is still to come.
The Bureau of Meteorology is tracking two tropical lows simultaneously. The bureau is keeping a close watch on system 29U, located east of Townsville, and 31U over the Gulf of Carpentaria, with both potentially developing into tropical cyclones later in the week. The BOM's cyclone forecast map shows there is a 25 per cent chance the low could develop into a cyclone on Thursday.
Senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said that regardless of whether the systems intensified into cyclones, "we're still going to see a big increase in rain and storms across northern Australia this week." That assessment alone should give pause to communities that have already endured extraordinary conditions this season.
Soil moisture is currently above average across much of the north, with full catchments meaning further rainfall is more likely to cause flash and riverine flooding. Minor to major flood warnings are currently in place for central and western Queensland and the eastern Northern Territory, with major flood warnings issued for the Flinders and Cape rivers.
The human and economic toll of the 2025-26 wet season is already severe. Far North Queensland has been inundated during the wet season, with pastoralists having lost an estimated 100,000 head of cattle, while Mt Isa recorded its wettest February on record, with more than 319 millimetres falling in the copper city. Roads have been cut by flash flooding, with one man needing to be airlifted to safety after his car was washed away in Queensland's Gulf Country; the Mount Isa LifeFlight helicopter flew to the Nicholson River and reached him on a sandbank surrounded by floodwaters, with motorists shining car headlights on the river to help locate him before he was taken to Doomadgee Hospital for a precautionary assessment.
The Queensland Government's disaster management portal notes that personal hardship assistance is available to flood-affected residents across multiple local government areas, from Carpentaria Shire to the Mackay region. Personal hardship assistance is available to flood-affected residents in Carpentaria Shire, Clermont (Isaac Region), Etheridge Shire, Flinders Shire, Livingstone Shire, the Mackay region, McKinlay Shire, Richmond Shire and Winton Shire local government areas. The breadth of that list speaks to just how widely the season's damage has spread.
Critics of Queensland's infrastructure investment in remote communities will find fresh evidence here for their case. Each successive flood season reveals the same pressure points: roads that cut communities off for weeks, rain gauges that fail at the critical moment, and emergency services stretched across vast distances. There is a legitimate question about whether the level of infrastructure resilience in Gulf Country and far north communities reflects the frequency and severity of the weather events they now routinely face.
At the same time, advocates for more generous disaster spending point to the compounding nature of these events. Graziers who lost cattle earlier in the season cannot simply absorb another blow. The argument for pre-positioned resources and better-funded rural emergency services is not abstract when a man is sitting on a sandbank in the dark waiting for a helicopter.
Rainfall is likely to be above average across much of northern Australia for the fortnight ending 13 March, with an increased chance of 50 per cent or greater that this rainfall will be unusually high, among the wettest 20 per cent of fortnights for this time of year, for northern parts of Western Australia, the central Northern Territory and most of Queensland.
For now, the priority is straightforward: residents should monitor alerts from the BOM's cyclone forecast page, avoid floodwaters entirely, and act on evacuation advice early. Whether this week's systems ultimately reach cyclone strength or not, the combination of saturated ground and another monsoonal burst leaves little margin for complacency in a region that has already given so much this season.