Major floods hammer northern Australia

Terra Daily via AFP: Two people were missing and the body of a third person was recovered from raging floodwaters as severe storms pounded northeastern Australia on Sunday, forcing more than 1,000 to flee their homes.

Army aircraft were deployed in the northern state of Queensland, where storms generated by former tropical cyclone Oswald unleashed punishing rains and localised tornadoes and floodwaters threatened several major towns.

One woman was plucked to safety in Biloela, 600 kilometres (400 miles) northwest of the state capital Brisbane, after spending eight hours clinging to a tree.

At Gympie north of Brisbane, three families had been forced to retreat to the roofs of their homes and had been awaiting rescue for more than seven hours after helicopters could not reach them due to the winds, town mayor Ron Dyne said....

A 2006 flood in Cairns, Queensland, shot by Rob and Stephanie Levy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license