Australia's Wild Weather

After a once-in-a-lifetime super storm, the east coast is battling through another disaster

Sara Tapia

First came the fires, then a worldwide pandemic, now Australia is battling through yet another disastrous event – after wild weather lashed a long swathe of the east coast and put 10 million Aussies under severe weather warnings. Torrential rain sparked large scale flooding all the way from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland down to the Illawarra region in New South Wales, displacing thousands of residents and disrupting utilities and businesses.

While meteorologists warned of the “once-in-a-lifetime” weather event, it did little to prepare residents – particularly those on NSW’s Mid North Coast and Sydney’s northwestern and far western suburbs – for the devastation that lay ahead. “These are very, very serious storms and floods,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said of the deluge.