Streets and jetties under water as king tide and storm cause flooding across Albany

A king tide and an influx of rain caused streets to flood and jetties to be swallowed by rising water across Albany on Monday. Low-lying areas of Lower King, Lower Kalgan and Oyster Harbour were inundated by Monday morning after 19.2mm of rain fell at the Albany Airport weather station from midnight to 10am. Wind gusts at the airport reached 74km/h just after 9am as an offshore deep low pressure system moved east past the south coast. The rain and wind came as swells reached more than 5m at The Gap. Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Jessica Lingard said the flooding had been caused by an influx of rain into inland catchments, which had flowed down the King and Kalgan Rivers towards Emu Point. This was compounded by a 1.37m king tide in addition to a 40cm residual tide pushing the water level past the 1.4m highest naturally occurring tide for the area. The new Moon is due to occur on Tuesday night. Ms Lingard said tides only surpassed the highest astronomical tide about once a year. “So you had a king tide and then there was also a residual tide of another 40cm, so that has taken you . . . well above what we would normally expect,” Ms Lingard said. “The highest astronomical tide would be the regular highest tide we would see throughout the year, so anything above that is quite significant. “We do see tides above the highest astronomical tide with the passing of strong cold fronts, because you get almost a bit of storm surge building up . . . as it pushes all of that water inland and up on to the coastline.” Ms Lingard said Monday morning’s cold front was fairly typical for the region in winter, despite warnings from BOM on Sunday night for the South West to brace for the kind of weather only seen “once in every three to four years”.