Clem, I'm not entirely sure what I should say, especially at the moment, but there is public information available -- try this for starters:

http://www.chiefscientist.qld.gov.au/publications/understanding-floods/comm-warn-about-floods.aspx

Thanks Jonty, I switch off when the sun goes down, so I'll go over it tomorrow. It looks interesting. I understand your present position.

There is a lot to be said for uniformity in services (such as warnings) that are provided to the general public. It would make it easier to find and understand the information provided to us, just for starters.

If there are a number of agencies (at various levels) involved in anything, it will be hard to achieve that uniformity that you are hoping for. It may also be the case that when BoM issues the original warning or advice, it is actually tailor-made for the agency it is issued to, rather than being created in a uniform format? When it comes to flash flood warnings, perhaps such things are still being developed or refined and uniformity for such things is still to be achieved or perhaps BoM do not consider it appropriate; instead they feel that tailoring that product to the audience is the best way to go?

Perhaps it is worth asking Hydrologists at BoM why they do it that way? Having a uniform type of warning may not be the best option; perhaps the way they do it now is considered appropriate? I do not know but I'd be interested to hear a BoM point of view.

Jonty, I had a read through the literature you posted. I found a few things worth noting in relation to warnings issued through the BoM. It seems that one of the problems is the interpretation other agencies place on warnings issued by the BoM before they are disseminated. Another problem are local on-the-ground conditions. For example, the other week we received over 600mm of rain over four days here at Bribie. There were a few occasions when a specific 'flash flood' warning was issued as part of a STW for Bribie. But this is a flat sand island and there was little if any danger of flash flooding, yet if 600mm fell at Bald Knob (upper catchment of the Mooloolah River) then this would cause serious problems downstream. So I can see the inherent inconsistencies. The following excerpt is from How do we communicate and warn about floods from the Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist:



Now this poses the question: how do these local government authorities and the BoM exchange information and warnings data?

The problem of communication is real as the following from the same report attests:



Indeed.

Finally, John Handmer states in Are Flood Warnings Futile? published in "The Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies Risk communication in emergencies" 2001: 'Even though the mass media is a key element in most warning systems, it is very rarely legally obligated or tied into a warning system and little research attention has been devoted to it.'

This is important when one considers the disparate methods used by various agencies in the dissemination of warnings. However, perhaps this is a topic for another thread on another day. It really is a case of everyone getting on the same page for the same purposes.

There is one question I hope you can answer for me Jonty. Why doesn't the Brisbane office of the BoM issue flood watches like NSW?

It's funny Clem, I've noticed this same difference in the last few weeks...even the key phrases to describe the weather phenomena in warnings differ from state to state amongst the same warning. I am confident that the same weather situation would generate 'heavy rain' in a QLD SWW and 'flash flooding' in a NSW SWW. This is a little nitpicky and there are more important things to worry about - but surely they all should be writing from the same template!



I am not a hydrologist or engineer, however I have learnt a lot about catchments and the way dams etc work in the past year or two and this is one of the things that I think I've figured out:

I believe the way the dams operate are based on what water is flowing in the catchment and in the dams themselves, not what is still in the air and yet to fall. This is because weather forecasts are not quite accurate enough yet for engineers/hydrologists to get very far into the future with any sort of certainty for forward planning.

A prime example of why weather forecasts are not used is the dam scenario that is currently being thrashed out by the flood commission in the period Jan 8-11 last year. Forecast rainfall during this period (particularly the 9th through 11th) was mostly below the dam (ie: in the Bremer, Logan/Albert and lower Brisbane catchments, and over the border in the Northern Rivers). If they had've released water from the dam to give themeslves more headroom in the following days, forecasts favoured a situation where a big flood could be sent through Brisbane, with very heavy rainfall falling in non-controlled water courses, with releases from the dams only making things worse. As we now know, most of the water from this event fell ABOVE Wivenhoe Dam wall (with two 1974-style rain events thrown at the dam in the space of 48 hours), which nobody would've been able to forecast with a high level of confidence back on Jan 8.

Here's some of the detail from the model runs at around the time of the 7th and 8th that show the positioning more clearly than the 1-4 day acccumulated falls for Australia:

00z run 7th Jan for the 9th


00z run 8th Jan for the 10th


(You can tell that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about some parts of the dam engineer witch hunt going on at the flood commission currently )

Now to the question of who does flash flood warnings:

According to the transcripts from when the flood commission questioned Jim Davidson - Local Government is charged with the issuing of flash flood warnings.

Now this is all a bit complicated, because the Bureau mention 'flash flooding' where applicable in their Severe Thunderstorm Warnings (for example today it got a constant run where 'damaging winds', 'large hail' etc weren't applicable on this occasion). The key difference here is that the Bureau are not responsible for flash flood warnings in specific creeks and rivers (which is where it is deferred to local government), but they do warn for flash flooding over broader areas in their SWW's and STW's.

Having said all this (next bee in my bonnet here, apologies again ), the Bureau can (and have in the past) warned for individual severe thunderstorms producing flash flooding in the past while the broader SWW is in place. This most recently occured a week or two ago. Today's STW was quickly issued for a specific cell when Laidley recorded 52mm in 30 mins, but on January 10 there was complete silence from their end when Redbank Creek recorded 111mm (most of which fell in the space of an hour or so) under the storm when it was west of Esk, and beginning to move over the upper Lockyer Valley.

Depending on the way you measure it, there was '4 hours of silence' between the very heavy rainfall recorded W of Esk by 1pm, and the 'flash flood warning' that the Bureau issued at 5pm. This embarrassing sequence of events is only made worse when you see the post of mine that you highlighted where I pasted the updated Lockyer Creek flood warning, issued an hour after the Helidon flood gauge spike. While this warning would've been issued by hydrologists who also largely operate on what water is sitting in the catchment, surely somebody in the entire Brisbane BoM office would've been looking at the radar and as a result, keeping an eye on the Helidon flood gauge, expecting to see some sort of spike there? Not to mention that by 4pm, flood footage from Toowoomba had already been on the TV stations for a good hour or so.

Anyway - what is the point of me ranting about Jan 10 again? It is that no matter how good or bad a system is, if the captain is asleep at the wheel, then there is certainly not going to be any sort of good result for the general public! This is not the only example of the Bureau being slow to react to situations like this - March 9, 2001 generated the infamous 'Bureau's 2 hours of silence' front cover on the Courier Mail. They were also quite sluggish during the Coomera River flood of Feb 7 2010 (which should've been a wakeup call and 'refresher/practice' for them less than 12 months before Jan 2011)




They seem to have a pretty good exchange of live data through what they call the 'ALERT network' I think. Various agencies have installed flood gauges across the country, and I believe they are pretty much all linked up on the Bureau's page.

In the capital cities especially (with the high resolution radars that have the 'accumulated rainfall' as estimated by the radar), you could forecast flash flooding in fairly specific locations to a pretty high accuracy when combining with the network of flood gauges and auto rain gauges. In fact the Bureau would probably do something similar now using some of these tools in order to produce their STW's at times. Going back to the Jan 10 example again, you probably could've issued an STW for that cell just based on the accumulated precip as measured by the Mt Stapylton radar. Its a pretty handy tool, and in my experience has lined up pretty well with the actual falls from the auto gauge network that get mentioned in warnings. Even if it doesn't get the actual totals spot on, at the very least it highlights the areas where the heaviest rain has fallen and from there you can start to assess the flash flood potential.

Speaking of flood gauges - I am looking forward to the new gauges on Coffs Creek being linked up to the Bureau's page, this will be an incredibly valuable resource for my home town!

After having reviewed the posts here, the literature provided, and the existing legislation, I am still of the conclusion that the BoM has sole responsibility for the issuing of flood warnings across the Commonwealth. As far as I can see there is no state legislation or local government law (in Queensland at least) that gives any other authority the power to issue flood warnings (flash or otherwise). Even if there was, Section 109 of the Constitution would declare such law invalid based on inconsistency. Sect 109 states:



Now the key wording in the Meteorology Act pertaining to the issuing of warnings for floods is the following:



Now you can read that any way you like, but it is clear from this that the BoM must issue warnings if weather conditions are such that are likely to give rise to floods (any flood).

End of story.

Hi Inclement,

one of the 'joys' of the English language is its ability to be interpreted in so many different ways. My interpretation of the Met Act would be that BoM issue warnings for WEATHER CONDITIONS likely to give rise to floods and then it would be up to local authorities to issue the FLOOD WARNINGS themselves as they see fit.

That is the same way it happens with fire weather. The BoM issue a warning for WEATHER CONDITIONS that give rise to a high fire danger and the local authorities issue the FIRE warnings.

I think it would be more appropriate for local authorities to issue the actual warnings for the events because they SHOULD have a better working knowledge of local conditions. It would be a bit much to expect the BoM forecasters to have intimate knowledge of local factors that have effects on what happens once the event starts to take place. Getting the local authorities to report back to BoM and indulge in a discussion of local events so that BoM forecasters could create and issue a warning, would take valuable time. It is probably quicker to alert the locals and let them take charge of the warnings and disaster management planning (my view anyway) and then leave BoM to monitor the weather over the rest of the state.

The whole local authorities issuing the warning still does not explain the decrepency between NSW & QLD BOM in respect to flood warnings a day or so out of an event.

I also get nervous know that the buck stops at the local authorities, because I am sure that quite a few of them do not have people after hours to deal with the flood warnings in a timely manner unlike the BOM which have staff on the ground all the time.

Hi RoadkillNZ

I can understand your concerns. I am also concerned about getting the right advice, at the right time, from the right people. As for 'after hours'; I expect that local authorities have people 'on call' that can deal with adverse weather situations (at least I hope so). As for BoM staff being 'on the ground all the time'; I don't think that is the case. As far as I know, in the NT, the Hydrology people only work 9 to 5, Mon to Fri, unless they have been called in because of major flooding. Like the local authorities, they are 'on call' and will only come out after hours if the duty forecasters think it is necessary. Once the call has been made, I think BoM staff and locals authorities are on the job and the usual hierarchy then kicks into gear.

I don't know why there are any discrepancies between what BoM Qld and BoM NSW might issue, but flood warnings a 'day or so out of an event' must be a pretty difficult call to make. I'd like to hear someone from BoM tell us why that might happen. Perhaps the relationships between BoM and authorities are different between those regions and that is why the BoM products are different? I know they do tailor their products to suit users, so maybe NSW authorities like a different version to Qld authorities? That is one possibility.