While El Niño often brings droughts to Australia, La Niña often
brings heavy rain, particularly to eastern parts of Australia.
In
northern Australia, monsoonal rains cause floods during the wet season
every year. These floods can be quite damaging, and although they
haven’t killed people lately, in the history they used to. Here is some
information about what causes floods, their effects, and some famous
floods in Australia.
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What Causes Floods
With some exceptions like when a dam was broken which caused the
flooding of New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina in 2005, floods are
most often caused simply by too heavy rains. Heavy rains can be caused
by different reasons, like severe storms and tropical cyclones
(hurricanes) like Cyclone Tracy, Cyclone
Yasi and Cyclone
Larry;
or they can be natural, like monsoonal rains which always bring heavy
rainfall. In Australia, El Niño – La Niña conditions also affect how
heavy the rains will get.
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Floods Effect
Floods can have devastating effects, even when people do get time to
prepare. They don’t only destroy buildings and crops, they isolate
towns as roads and railway lines get cut off, they kill cattle and wild
animals, and they can cause health hazards as some insects
may start breeding uncontrollably, sewerage
systems may be broken, and drinking water may be in short supply.
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Some Famous Australian Floods
Some of the worst Australian floods have been the 1916-1917 flood in Queensland
that devastated the town of Clermont
and
killed 61 people; the 1955-1956 floods in New
South Wales that destroyed parts of Maitland
and killed 22 people; and the 1974 floods from Cyclone Wanda in Brisbane
that destroyed 6,000 homes and killed 12 people. There have lately been
pretty bad floods, but they haven’t costed any lives,
except the famous 2010 Queensland floods where 35 people were killed.
Note:
This site uses
British English, which is the English we use in Australia. You will
find words like "traveller", "harbour" and "realise", and they are all
correct in the language used in Australia.
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