Heavy rainfall across Australia’s eastern states has prompted the cancellation of the Byron writers festival and a warning for participants in Sunday’s City2Surf race in Sydney to take care, after parts of the east coast received nearly double the typical August monthly rainfall in eight days.
The Byron festival organisers said they were “devastated” to announce the cancellation of the annual event due to the condition of the festival site and ongoing rain, and that it was a “deeply regrettable but necessary decision”.
“The forecast conditions make it impossible to continue the event safely,” the artistic director, Jessica Alice, said in a statement following the festival’s first day.
This is not the first year the writers festival, of which Guardian Australia is a partner, has been affected by rain. In 2019, one day of the festival was cancelled due to extreme weather and in 2022, as the northern rivers region experienced devastating flooding, the festival changed its venue.
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Alice said her team did a lot of site work to mitigate the effects of the weather: ensuring there was adequate drainage, creating pathways for people to move safely around and investing in sturdy marquees. But she said extreme weather was now something event organisers needed to plan for.
“It’s absolutely something we now need to discuss more urgently,” Alice said. “This weather that we’ve had – we’re used to rain in the northern rivers … but it’s very unusual for it to be this wet at this time of year.
“We’re feeling these effects in a different way.”
A surface trough sitting off the coast of Queensland and pushing moisture down the east coast led to an extensive area of cloud stretching from central eastern Queensland through the New South Wales coast, and rainy conditions for much of the east coast, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
There were heavy rainfall totals along the eastern seaboard after Friday night, with 75mm to the north of Rockhampton, more than 50mm along the coast from Yamba towards Lismore and up to 50mm in Sydney’s east.
Some parts of the NSW coast have already seen their average monthly rainfall dramatically exceeded in the first eight days of August, including Sydney, where average August rainfall has been about 80mm – and which, as of 9am on Saturday, has already received 140mm of rain. Rainfall in Newcastle has reached 147mm.
“In the seven days to 9am this morning, the highest rainfall for NSW is 255mm at Careys Creek [in the Hunter region],” senior BoM meteorologist Jonathan How said.
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There were hazardous surf warnings in place for the K’gari coast and Sunshine Coast Waters in Queensland, said How, and a major flood warning remained in place for the Namoi River at Wee Waa, Bugilbone and Goangra, though How said the rainfall and flooding were subsiding.
“Narrabri’s levels are subsiding, but our message is that the rivers still [have] a lot of water flowing through them, so reminding people to take care,” he said.
How also flagged conditions for the annual City2Surf race in Sydney.
“It’s looking to be quite a showery sort of morning for participants and quite chilly with that southerly wind coming through as well,” he said.
“So, not the best conditions for running.”
