Australia faces worst floods in 60 years, to evacuate thousands

Australian authorities planned to evacuate thousands of people from the flood-affected suburbs in the west of Sydney on Monday.

The country is facing its worst flooding in 60 years with drenching rain expected to continue for the next few days.

Persistent rains over the past three days caused an overflow of rivers in Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales (NSW), causing widespread damage and triggering calls for mass evacuations.

The NSW’s Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, who spoke on the development on Sunday, urged residents to brace up for a “very difficult week.”

She said: “Torrential rain which has submerged large swathes of NSW is in stark contrast to the weather conditions in the same regions a year ago when authorities were battling drought and catastrophic bush-fires.

“I don’t know any time in a state history where we have had these extreme weather conditions in such quick succession in the middle of a pandemic.”

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Meanwhile, Sydney recorded the wettest day of the year with almost 111 mm (4.4 inches) of rain on Sunday.

Government data showed that some regions on NSW’s north coast received nearly 900 mm of rain in the last six days, more than three times the March average.

According to reports, an official of the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), Jane Golding, said around 18,000 people have been evacuated from the low- lying areas of the state.

“Large parts of the country’s east coast will get hit by more heavy rains from Monday due to the combination of a tropical low over northern Western Australia and a coastal trough off NSW.

“We expect this heavy rain to fall on areas that haven’t seen as much rain over the last few days, we expect the flood risk to develop in those areas as well,” Golding said.

The authorities also affirmed that some places in Sydney’s western regions have seen the worst flooding since 1961, and are expecting the wild weather to continue until Wednesday.

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