Since last weekend, an upper level disturbance combined with a surface low pressure trough which first formed east of Townsville and then tracked slowly westwards to far west of Queensland, brought heavy falls in its wake.
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Cairns received 335mms in four days while Townsville received 293mms.
Some places in the Central West of Queensland recorded over 100mms in the 24 hours to 9am Tuesday, April 26.
Barcaldine recorded 114.2mms and this was the highest daily total for April since 116.8mms recorded on April 22, 1918.
Blackall recorded 116.8mms, the highest daily total for April since 140mms in 1941.
Both towns had heavy rains for late April in 1918, 1955 and 1990 (like this April), and our region was invaded by widespread heavy rain at the end of April and even heavier rain during the middle of May.
Longreach also had its heaviest rain for late April since 1918, while Winton had 92mms to 9am on Anzac Day, its wettest April day there since 162mms on April 19, 1974.
This month's total rainfall at Winton has reached 155mms, just short of the record wet April of 1974.
All of Victoria and the Riverina was invaded by widespread heavy rain near the end of April 1974 and again during May 13 to 17, which was preceded by a warm, humid spell in Victoria.
Cairns received 335mms in four days ...
Some of this heavy rain transported into the pastoral districts of South Australia with heavy falls at Marree and at Woomera where 68.8mms fell to 9am Tuesday, April 26.
This was Woomera's wettest April day in 71 years of records, surpassing the 1963 record of 46mms which fell on April 28.
Very often heavy rains in these pastoral districts during the autumn season reach our region within two days.
The heavy rain at Woomera and other nearby centres in late April 1963 reached our regions by the end of April, then came a second heavy rain burst by the third week of May 1963 with floods in East Gippsland.
Woomera had its wettest January on record this year with 105.8mms.
A very wet January then a very wet April in the same year also occurred in 1968 and 1974 at Woomera.
In 1968 we had heavy rain and thunderstorms at the end of April and the first half of May was very wet.
Some rain had reached the Mallee by Tuesday afternoon.
Mildura received 6mms by 4pm with dew point temperatures of 16 degrees, very high for this time of year.
Mildura's maximum temperature was only 16.8 degrees compared with 24 degrees in North East Victoria.
