An emergency alert has been issued for Townsville with residents warned to be prepared to leave if the situation worsens overnight. After days of storms in southeast Queensland the state's north is now copping a soaking. Heavy rain from Mackay to cairns has caused flash flooding cutting roads and interrupting travel plans.
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00:00School holiday boredom? Just add water.
00:05We like to come down here and get wet.
00:09The northern wet season has well and truly arrived.
00:13This amount of rainfall is really unusual, even in North Queensland.
00:17Townsville copped the brunt of today's drenching.
00:20One gauge recording almost 200 millimetres in three hours.
00:25The North Queensland deluge has surprised long-time locals.
00:29We get plenty of rain around, but there's a fair bit the last couple of days, this time of the year.
00:34Closing roads along the coast, including the Bruce Highway.
00:38We're used to having 74 islands here on the Whitsundays, but I think we've got a few more today.
00:43Flooding has disrupted holiday plans.
00:47The road was cut up to Prosperpine and we just turned around to come back to the Cowan pub to sit it out and wait.
00:55Still, some are skirting the warnings, driving through floodwaters again and again.
01:02It's just not worth the risk to yourself or your family's life, particularly at this time of year.
01:08There are other dangers to watch out for too.
01:11The Weather Bureau says there's a low chance of a tropical cyclone developing as the system moves offshore.
01:19As for the Christmas week forecast...
01:22It looks as though we're scaling back to seasonal showers and storms across most of North Queensland.
01:27But it won't dampen the festive cheer.