MELBOURNE, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Australians have been warned to brace themselves for a month's rainfall to arrive in a 24-hour period.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said that two cold fronts moving across the southeastern states of Victoria and Tasmania on Thursday night and Friday would bring torrential rain and winds up to 96 kilometers per hour. It has issued flood warnings as a result.
Senior BoM forecaster Rod Dixon said while the first front, coming in from the west, would deliver damaging winds and some rain, the second front was the one residents should worry about.
Dixon said that Victorians should expect at least 30 to 40 millimeters of rain, with some parts expected to top 70 millimeters, more than the average rainfall for the entire month of September.
"It's probably their monthly rainfall in about 24 hours," Dixon told the ABC on Thursday.
The same weather systems prompted the BoM to issue a flood warning for northern Tasmania.
In June, the region was hit by its worst floods since 1929 with two people being killed by the "catastrophic" disaster from which the region is still recovering.
Brooke Oakley, a BoM forecaster, said much of Tasmania's northwest would receive more than 100 millimeters of rain on Friday.
"Over 100 millimeters further inland over the Western Tiers. The river basins we're most concerned about are the Mersey and the Meander, but the North Esk is also a possibility for flood warning later today and tomorrow," Oakley told the ABC.
Northern Tasmania's State Emergency Services (SES) regional manager, Mharie Revie, said it was essential that people be aware of the warnings in their area for their own safety.
"We are certainly not worried that it's going to be anything of the magnitude of the floods that we had certainly in June or even in July," she told the ABC.
"People need to be aware that (a) rain event is coming and some people who live in flash flood areas like the bottom of hills and so forth need to be particularly aware."
