The Murray River in Albury is expected to hit major flood levels after Lake Hume discharges were increased at the weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Murray River at Albury was at 5.03m – moderate flood levels – early Sunday and rising, with the major flood peak at 5.5m.
“Hume Dam is now about 98 per cent capacity. Water continues to flow into the dam from last week’s rain and the Bureau of Meteorology has forecast significant rainfall in the catchment late today and into Tuesday,” Murray Darling Basin Authority’s acting head of river management, Andrew Reynolds, said on Sunday.
“The volume of water released from the dam into the Murray River climbed to 60,000 megalitres per day (ML/day) over the past two days, and this morning reached 70,000 ML/day.
“Higher releases are possible in coming days … The rate of release will depend on how much rain falls.
“Given the dam is almost full, we expect rain upstream to pass downstream through the dam quite quickly.”
Albury SES information officer Jai Greenaway said residents at Howlong and Corowa would see water rising from late Sunday.
The SES has also positioned flood rescue experts at Urana where roads had been cut. It was feared motorists heading north after the Deni Ute Muster could ignore warning signs and attempt to drive on closed roads.
“The Deni Ute Muster has been very good in putting out warnings about the roads but people do tend to ignore the signs,” Ms Greenaway said.
“They think they can get through because they’ve got a 4WD with a snorkel and it’s diesel and all of those things.
“Historically we know people ignore the signs, and we’ve already done one rescue today, and the police have just arrived there and will be turning people back.”
Meanwhile, forecast rain on Monday will not dint expectations for the historic Walbundrie Show, with the majority of events to go ahead as planned.
The show committee have cancelled the shearing championships and the show jumping competition but all other horse events will proceed as scheduled.
Saturday’s Culcairn show went ahead without horse events, which will be rescheduled to a date later this year.
Sunday’s Berrigan show and The Rock show, planned for October 15, have been cancelled because of the weather.
Show secretary Brenda Lieschke said the Walbundrie showground surface had held up well through the winter rain.
“Let’s hope for a nice day and the crowd comes,” she said. “For those who do make the effort it is always a good show. We’ll still have our animal farm for the kids.”
