Australian Weather

03 Apr 2025, 10:01AM UTC

Satellites have captured spectacular images of the massive floods currently affecting southwest Queensland, revealing water stretching thousands of kilometres across the Australian outback. After multiple rounds of heavy rain over the past fortnight, clear skies on Thursday allowed satellites to capture high-resolution images of the flooded landscape. While breaks in cloud allowed glimpses of the flooding late last week and earlier this week, Thursday offered the clearest view yet of the immense flooding stretching across Queensland’s vast Channel Country. The image below is a natural ‘true colour’ satellite image of the landscape on Thursday morning, offering a clear view of the earthy floodwaters in southwest Qld. Image: Visible true colour satellite image captured at 8:30am AEST on Thursday, April 3. While the floodwaters are easy enough to make out on the image above, they are better highlighted using false colours that help distinguish water from the surrounding landscape. The image below uses false colours that enhance floods by making liquid water on the ground appear blue, with sediment-heavy water appearing darker blue. Image: Corrected reflectance image captured by the Terra satellite on Thursday, April 3. Source: NASA Worldview The video below also uses this technique to show the immense scale of the flooding, with the flooded rivers clearly standing out against the Australian outback. Video: Himawari-9 satellite image using corrected reflectance to show flooding in southwest Queensland on Thursday, April 3. The main rivers that can be seen in the images and video above are the Georgina, Diamantina and Bulloo Rivers and the Cooper Creek. Some sections of these rivers have bulged to about 70 km in width as the floodwater inundates the notoriously flat landscape of Queensland’s Channel Country. These flatland floods will continue for weeks to months as the water slowly drains through the landscape. Some of this water will eventually reach Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, although that’s not going to happen until late-April into May.

03 Apr 2025, 5:10AM UTC

Do you turn your clocks forwards or backwards at 3am this Sunday, April 6, in the Australian states and territories where daylight saving ends (NSW, ACT, SA, Vic, Tas)? That might seem like a simple question, but even great minds have occasionally seized up as people ask themselves, "Wait, is it forward or back? Are we adding or subtracting an hour here?" The answer is that you turn the clocks backwards (if indeed your home or personal effects include any timepieces that require manual changing), and there’s a weather-related way to remember. “Spring forward, fall back” Simple as that. That’s the simple mnemonic (handy phrase to help you remember things) to remind you to turn your clocks forwards in the spring and backwards in the fall – or in the autumn as we Australians call it. READ MORE: Don’t make this common daylight saving mistake Reverting back to Australian Eastern Standard Time as daylight saving ends means that: From 3am this Sunday, there will be no gap between clocks in Australia’s three largest cities, as Brisbane catches up to Melbourne and Sydney. Adelaide, Darwin and Alice Springs will all be back on the same time, rather than the NT being an hour behind SA. Perth will now be just two hours behind the southeastern states, not three. If you live in a state where daylight saving is about to end, you will get to relive the hour between 2am and 3am in the closest your life will ever come to the movie Groundhog Day. While you’ll have less light for outdoors activities in the evenings from Sunday onwards, you will gain some extra light in the morning – although this will be negated as days shorten with winter approaching. READ MORE: Our story from 2023 about Australia’s smallest, strangest (unofficial) time zone From a meteorological reporting point of view, maximum temperatures can now be expected to occur slightly earlier in the day in states that revert back to regular time. And for those wondering, the official term is daylight saving (singular), not daylight savings (plural).