Parts Of Australia Drown In Floods, Again, Two Years After Mega-Wildfires

Areas around Sydney, Australia are experiencing
serious flooding for the third time in 18 months. 

Sydney, Australia and much of the rest of the southeastern Australia just had another epic flood, the fourth big flood disaster in 18 months.  

The rain just won't stop. As the Washington Post explains, Sydney received 8.6 inches in just four days, and some nearby areas had more than two feet of rain in that time period. 

Sydney has had 70 inches of rain so far this year, and it's only July. If not another drop of rain falls on Sydney through December 31, it will still be their 11th wettest year on record.  

Several atmospheric conditions contributed to Sydney's latest deluge, but climate change surely played a role. It would have been wet without climate change, but warm air holds more moisture, which can supercharge precipitation in storms.

Probably an even bigger factor is the unusually warm ocean temperatures off the coast of southeast Australia. Climate change is heating up the oceans. The relatively warm water fed plenty of extra energy into storms along the Australian coast, leading to the heavy rains. 

Two years ago, much of the same region burned in the worst wildfires in Australian history. In a world of increasing weather extremes, Australia is becoming a poster child for those extremes. 

From the Washington Post:

"'Australia has long been a continent of droughts and flooding rains; having said that, projections indicate that climate change will supercharge this variability,' Chiara Holgate, a researcher with the Australia National University and ARC Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes, said in an email. 'Observations show there's been an increase in the intensity of heavy rainfall events in Australia including the short-duration events, which can be associated with flash flooding."

Enduring a flood that trashes your house is awful, of course, but if it's a once in a lifetime event, most of us can find ways to recover from such a calamity.  It's a lot harder if it happens over and over again. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"For some Sydney residents in historically flood-prone areas, the deluge was the third in four months. 

'Where do you start? Mentally, physically, financially, it destroys you,' Judy White told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. She said she was still cleaning up from the last flood when the waters again inundated her home in the Sydney suburb of Londonderry." 

The same repeat and rinse flooding and disaster fatigue is also true for entire nations. 

Australian floods in February and March cost about $3.35 billion in insured losses, making that disaster the costliest in the nation's history, the Washington Post reports.

So climate change induced disasters are definitely a real drain on the economy.  

The flood waters will recede, people will begin to recover, and then another flood will arrive. Or things will really dry out, and the big bushfires wills start again in Australia. 

Remember, much of this area had some of the most devastating bush fires in Australian history back in 2019-2020.

Australia seems especially prone to climate change driven extremes.  They might be a parable for the reset of us.