That's so....bizarre.

What about the hybrid cyclone? And there was another low in the early 2000s I thought. Much quieter but not that quiet.

I remember the '04 hybrid but that's it really. Probably were more though.

http://forum.weatherzone.com.au/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=103876
http://www.drdisk.com.hk/seq04.htm

To be honest, it looked too 'ECL-ish' to really count for me haha.

You could add the 2012 tropical low to that list too Flowin - made it down to about Gympie during the early morning before being sheared apart.

A interesting read here for some history of all cyclones and tropical lows off the east coast by Jeff Callaghan ex BOM.

http://hardenup.org/umbraco/customConten...s_1858-2008.pdf

Wow, that is some awesome history lesson F.C., thanks for sharing. Great work.
Seems to me abundant TC's and storms in our history & they will keep on coming!

Thanks for that link, it was very interesting reading.

What about Cyclone Beni, that was Feb 2003

Here is a satellite time-lapse from the last 24 hours of Owen up in the Gulf. It updates every 30 minutes.
https://www.oceanviewweather.com.au/Satellite/HimawariSatellite-GulfOfCarpentaria.aspx

Amazingly common historically for TC's to cross SE Qld and northern NSW. I didn't know that.

It appears that the recent model runs (12Z) are not settled on taking ex Owen poleward to a southern graveyard.
GFS was showing signs earlier yesterday of a change in direction northward again when it reaches Fraser Is.
EC now seems to be coming on board with a change to the north again, but perhaps taking the system past Fraser before turning north again. BoM on radio this morning saying strong winds could be a main feature of this system (more compact than Oswald in 2013). If that scenario comes this system could make quite a mess of Fraser Island beaches a week before Christmas.

The difference between GFS and GFS-FV3 also appears to be closing.
HWRF hinting at this ex TC staying further north.

I guess it’s all relative. If you compare it to the northern or central QLD coast, it’s still far less common down here and when they do cross here, it’s typically a low-end TC or low.
But as I’ve said before, there’ll probably come a day eventually when a high-end one makes a direct impact.

Great reading all these posts. I often read the BOM's archives to try to match up what I can remember from about 1965 to see if it really happened. I found most did, especially cyclone Dinah. Probably RWM has a few stories to tell.

Looks like a battle between threads and Plucka now.

Dangerous system. Owen gets all the attention because its a cyclone. But big stagnating uppper low over SE Australia, and blocking high, they are the real players. Without them the ex-TC wouldn't come anywhere near here and we'd be fine and boring. Without the Tropical cyclone I think the upper system would still manage to spin up some random patch of thunderstorms in the coral sea into an impressive hybrid or ECL.

Definite stall potential on this system which is an important ingredient for the most extreme floods. Access wants a stall way north, and EC maybe just far enough off the coast at the moment to avoid serious problems. But definitely something to watch.

Moisture delivery from the Pacific is overall pretty poor considering a big fat high in the Tasman, but still ok. And when it comes this far south there is quite a northerly fetch dragging moisture out of the tropics. I'm guessing the system would still have less moisture to play with than some other comparable systems. Compare to the ECL near Sydney a week or three ago, overall a poor moisture supply, but a thin slab of very moist air pulled along the coast from the north. Still got some fairly serious floods happening, but more localized than it could have been with a big moisture feed IMO.

Our rural SEQ catchments are quite dry at the moment, so I would expect rainfall totals well over 100 mm as a minimum probably closer to 200 mm would be needed for flooding in the larger rivers.
The more concerning risk may be flash flooding particularly in urbanised creek catchments that have a lot of paving where almost any rain runs off. It only takes a 2 or 3 hour burst of heavy rain for many urban creeks to rise quickly.

And the donut hole award goes to......
http://www.farmonlineweather.com.au/models/rainfallchart.jsp?lt=wzstate&lc=qld&mh=168

Looks like we are definitely in between systems.

EC is still the only model going past Fraser. And GFS is the only one that keeps it relatively strong up to Fraser. All the rest keep it further north and weaker. My money is on EC backing down as soon as this evening.

Think ya right NF that low has to compete with a brick wall of a strengthening ridge looking at latest Access maps.

With our catchments being so bone dry, if we get sudden, persistent heavy rain is it more likely to run off than soak in? Curious about the science there.

Coxy, some localised areas particularly soils with high clay content can produce runoff from high intensity rain before the ground is fully saturated. The concept is when rainfall rate exceeds the infiltration capacity. That effect is typically localised.
However my comment about dry catchments was more in relation to the larger rivers. For large rivers to flood a substantial area of the catchment needs to produce runoff, so the localised effects of high rainfall intensity exceeding infiltration capacity alone is often not sufficient for large river flooding. Really need the catchment to wet up and then produce widespread runoff for large rivers to flood.
Smaller creeks and catchments are different and can respond before the catchment is fully wet particularly in high intensity rainfall.