THE wet season may have finished three weeks ago but someone forgot to tell Mother Nature, who dumped a deluge of rain over parts of far north Queensland at the weekend.
A week after being officially drought declared – and a week out from the official start of winter - areas of the Atherton Tablelands and Cape York Peninsula recorded their highest rainfall for the month of May in decades.
For the 24 hour period to Sunday, Malanda received 132mm, Millaa Millaa 145mm, Topaz 210mm and Ravenshoe 87mm.
Coastal centres shared the rain, Innisfail recording 132mm, Tully Sugar Mill 156mm and Cairns Racecourse 107mm.
Parts of the drought-affected Cape York Peninsula recorded good falls, with Cooktown leading the way on 211mm, Weipa 67mm and Laura 37mm.
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Sean Fitzgerald said a decent upper trough travelled through the region, dragging down a lot of moisture.
“This helped enhance rainfall during the period and the rain was slow-moving,” Mr Fitzgerald said. “The region got some decent falls and some records were broken.
“Flaggy near Hopevale recorded 324mm in the 24 hour period (up to Sunday) and there were lots of falls in excess of 200mm as well at the Daintree, Cooktown and Tully, which is pretty decent rain for this time of the year.
“The most impressive is Cooktown, which broke its 24 hour record for May, which was 103mm on 4 May 1920, with 211mm on Sunday.
“At Weipa, its previous record was 53.6mm from 2003 and it received 67.6mm. At Low Isles the previous was 99.4mm on 9 May in 1987, and it received 186mm this time.”
Mr Fitzgerald said the weather, driven by an upper trough, was classic for this time of the year but not an indication of things to come.
“We are on the very weakening end of an El Nino and it’s starting to die out but this kind of rainfall can’t be linked to that kind of climatology and it’s not really direct to base the future off one event.”
The western part of Cape York was expected to receive rain this week.
