Wild storms lash eastern Australia

Wild storms lashed eastern Australia overnight, tearing roofs off houses, toppling trees and flooding roads, emergency services said today. At least one person was feared swept away by the surging waters.

Rescuers were hunting for a boy a witness reported seeing swept under a bridge in the southern city of Melbourne.

Police Senior Sergeant Glenn Maine said two people saw the child hanging from a railing on the bridge, but he was gone when they reached the scene.

Outside the city, the road into Melbourne Airport was flooded, bringing traffic to a virtual standstill.

“The rains have actually flooded the entrance to the airport which was completely closed with traffic banked up,” airport spokeswoman Brooke Lord said.

“Melbourne Airport staff went out and pumped water from the road and about 8am (9pm Irish time yesterday) they managed to open one lane and now both lanes are open.”

Six international flights to Melbourne and several domestic flights also were diverted early today as torrential rain pounded the airport.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Ward Rooney said Melbourne got well over twice it’s February average rainfall in a single day.

Melbourne’s average February rainfall is 45.8 millimetres (1.8 inches), but the city received 120 millimetres (4.72 inches) of rain in the 24 hours to 9am (10pm Irish time) – the highest single day rainfall on record for the city, smashing the mark of 108 millimetres (4.25 inches) set in 1951.

In Sydney, the storm hit last night, tearing roofs off several houses and knocking down trees across the city. The wild weather killed a 16-year-old girl on a camping trip in forests south of Sydney on Tuesday night when a tree slammed into her tent. Another girl sharing the tent survived unharmed.

The same low pressure system blamed for the storms in Sydney and Melbourne also kicked up a huge dust storm in the Outback of southern Queensland state and dumped snow on mountains in Southeastern Australia – in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer.