A MONSOON trough in the Coral Sea has a chance of developing into a cyclone early next week.
The trough will approach the Far North Queensland coast on Sunday, and there is a 5-20 per cent chance the low will form into a cyclone. That chance increases to 50 per cent by Wednesday.
It comes as heavy rain continues to lash the Far North tropical coast with falls up to 600mm recorded in some areas in the last week.
Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist James Thompson said areas north of Cairns had received the highest rainfall this week, and several flood warnings were in place.
Bairds in the Daintree received 252mm in the 24 hours to 9am today, forcing the closure of ferry services on the Daintree River.
“The Tropical North does have the possibility of heavy falls continuing across the wet tropics, north of Cairns about the east coast for the next day or two,” Mr Thompson said.
“Over the last seven days there has been some very heavy falls across the east tropics, with falls of between 400mm-600mm recorded between Tully and Cooktown.
“We have a monsoon trough coming in to our part of the world in the northern Peninsula about Sunday, and there is increased chance of tropical cyclone development from Sunday.”
“Rainfall of 100mm-200mm is possible in some parts of the northern tropical coast district when we start to see the monsoon.”
Mr Thompson said most of the rain had been isolated to the tropics, and the remainder of Queensland was expected to remain dry.
“We haven’t seen too much rainfall across much of Queensland away from the tropical coast for the last couple of days, the central and north-west haven’t seen much rainfall lately and there’s nothing on the horizon.”
Mr Thompson said warm conditions were expected throughout the remainder of the state, with western areas set to swelter.
“We are seeing hot conditions in the western parts of Queensland with a low intensity heat wave for far south-west of over the next couple of days.”
Mr Thompson said Birdsville would reach 44C tomorrow, while towns including Mount Isa, Julia Creek and Cloncurry could expect temperatures in the low 40s.
In the south-east, temperatures will begin to rise to the low 30s over the next couple of days, with Toowoomba set to reach 31C-32C from Sunday.
