You can only plan ahead so much.
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Saturday saw parts of NSW experience near-record rainfall, with one house near Taree swept up in the resulting floodwaters and carried down the Manning River.
The Warragamba Dam - Sydney's main water source - also began to overflow, sparking debates about flood-mitigation efforts and the wisdom of allowing housing in downstream low-lying areas.
On top of the COVID-19 crisis, with the country's vaccine rollout already well behind pace, that would have been bad enough.
But that high-pressure system over the Tasman showed no sign of letting up today, continuing to drive widespread and persistent rain onto the NSW coast.
More towns across the state were evacuated, volunteer SES crews were called out to thousands of jobs (mostly for storm damage, but plenty for flood rescues) and a "small tornado" even ripped through a high school in Sydney's west.
Footage taken by Manning River Times photographer Scott Calvin showed a shipping container being propelled down a river like it was nothing more than a cardboard box.
So that's pretty bad, right? She should be easing up soon?
Hardly. The Bureau of Meteorology is warning that the Hawkesbury River at North Richmond - where many Australian Community Media newspapers are printed - could reach 15 metres by Monday morning (so please forgive us if your paper arrives a little later than usual).
In the Nepean Valley - which includes major urban centre Penrith - they're gearing up for the worst flooding in 60 years.
The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting two weather systems will collide over NSW on Monday, bringing with it more heavy rainfall and thunderstorms.
Through until Thursday.
If you need a case study, how about this Wollongong family? Stuck on the North Coast, they had to battle floodwaters to get home in time for an urgent COVID vaccination.
"My wife's with Wollongong Hospital and she's supposed to be getting her COVID vaccination [on Monday] as part of the A1 rollout, so we don't know if she's going to make that," Cory Middleton told The Illawarra Mercury.
"She works in the pathology department there so it's fairly critical that she gets it."
You can't really plan for that.
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Andrew Thorpe
I edit the opinion pages and write the occasional breaking news story, feature or newsletter, in addition to being part of the production team which gets the paper out the door and manages our digital products.
I edit the opinion pages and write the occasional breaking news story, feature or newsletter, in addition to being part of the production team which gets the paper out the door and manages our digital products.
