500,000 people on flood alert as rain lashes Sydney

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology warned of life-threatening flash flooding and damaging winds with peak gusts in excess of 90kph

A car parked near a flooded road at Windsor on the outskirts of Sydney (Rick Rycroft/AP)

Around 500,000 people in Sydney and its surrounds had by Thursday been told to evacuate or prepare to flee floodwater as torrential rain lashed an extraordinarily long stretch of Australia’s east coast.

Rivers were rising in the country’s most populous city, home to five million, with New South Wales’ state emergency services minister Steph Cooke warning of “treacherous weather conditions” over the next 24 hours.