Sydney records wettest January day in 38 years as flash floods trigger rescues and evacuations

By midmorning on Sunday, the fairways at Palm Beach on Sydney’s northern fringe looked less like a golf course than an inland lake. In a video that rocketed around social media, a man in board shorts pulled on goggles and swam across the submerged green as rain hammered down, disappearing into water that had swallowed bunkers, paths and boundary fences.

By the end of January 18, Sydney had logged its wettest January day in nearly four decades. Cars were abandoned on flooded roads, families were ordered out of low‑lying homes around Narrabeen Lagoon, a landslide smashed into beachfront houses, and volunteer emergency crews spent the weekend pulling people from rapidly rising water.

Wettest January day since 1988

The deluge marked Sydney’s heaviest January day of rain since 1988, capping a weekend of violent thunderstorms and onshore downpours that drenched a long stretch of the New South Wales coast. It also added another chapter to a pattern that scientists and planners say is becoming familiar: intense, short‑lived rainstorms overwhelming a city built hard up against creeks, lagoons and floodplains.

Sydney’s official gauge at Observatory Hill, near the central business district, recorded 126.8 millimeters (about 5 inches) of rain in the 24 hours to 9 a.m. Sunday. The Bureau of Meteorology said it was the city’s wettest January day in 38 years.

Totals were far higher in some coastal suburbs. On the Northern Beaches, Palm Beach Golf Club collected 346 millimeters, Great Mackerel Beach 264 millimeters and Terrey Hills 180 millimeters — the wettest day on record for that station. To the north on the Central Coast, gauges at Pearl Beach and Woy Woy climbed above 240 millimeters.

“Some locations saw between 80 and 140 millimeters of rain in just one to three hours,” meteorologist Felix Levesque said in a weekend briefing. “For those sites, that intensity is equivalent to a one‑in‑200‑ to one‑in‑500‑year event.”

That kind of burst turned familiar low spots into hazards within minutes.

Evacuations and rescues around Narrabeen Lagoon

On Saturday night, as thunderstorms stalled over the Northern Beaches, the New South Wales State Emergency Service (SES) escalated its warnings for residents around Narrabeen Lagoon, a shallow coastal lake ringed by homes, unit blocks and holiday parks.

“You must evacuate before this time because floodwaters are rapidly rising and may impact properties,” an SES emergency alert told residents in the low‑lying suburbs around the lagoon. Northern Beaches Council amplified the warning, advising people to move vehicles to higher ground and be prepared to be cut off if they stayed.

By dawn, brown water had spread over sections of Pittwater Road and into nearby streets. Some houses reported water over floors. A busy caravan park on the lagoon’s edge was partially inundated.

Landslide damage and a storm-related death

Elsewhere along the coast, the saturated ground gave way. At remote Great Mackerel Beach, accessible only by boat, a landslide roared down a hillside late Saturday, smashing into three homes and injuring a woman in one of the properties.

South of Sydney, a woman died when a tree branch fell onto her car on Macquarie Pass, a winding mountain road near Wollongong, as storms brought strong winds and heavy rain through the Illawarra region. Police said paramedics were unable to revive her.

SES incidents surge; transport disruptions spread

Across the weekend, the SES — the state’s lead flood and storm agency — reported thousands of calls for help. Officials said crews responded to more than 2,300 incidents over the worst of the weather, including at least two dozen flood rescues. Other tallies over a broader 48‑hour window put the number of incidents above 3,000, with more than half in greater Sydney.

“We’ve seen very high rainfall and dangerous flash flooding right along the coast,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Sonya Oyston, the SES state duty commander, said on Sunday. “Our volunteers have been exceptionally busy responding to requests for assistance.”

Many of those calls came from people trapped in cars at flooded underpasses and low‑lying roads.

Footage from suburbs including Mona Vale, Manly Vale and Brookvale showed vehicles stalled in water up to their windows. In some locations, drivers tried to steer around barricades, only to be swept sideways by fast‑moving water. SES crews urged people to stay off the roads unless travel was essential.

“The message is simple: never drive, walk or ride through floodwater,” Oyston said. “If it’s flooded, forget it.”

The rail network also buckled under the rain. Sydney Trains suspended services on parts of the Central Coast and Newcastle line after water covered tracks and triggered landslip concerns. Sections of the Pacific Highway and local arterial roads were closed by flooding and fallen trees. Utilities reported scattered power outages after trees brought down lines in coastal suburbs.

What drove the downpour

Forecasters said a coastal trough — a broad zone of low pressure — became anchored off the New South Wales coast late in the week, funneling a deep stream of humid easterly winds onto land. Sea surface temperatures in the Tasman Sea have been warmer than average, providing extra moisture.

When that saturated air mass ran into Sydney’s coastal escarpment and the lower Blue Mountains, it was forced upward, condensing into thick cloud and repeated thunderstorm cells. Many of those storms moved slowly, or trained over the same areas.

For residents in flood‑prone pockets of the city, the pattern was familiar.

Narrabeen Lagoon has long been recognized as a flood hotspot. Studies and council flood plans have warned that intense rain combined with ocean conditions can quickly push water levels over banks and into surrounding streets. The area has seen repeated evacuations in recent decades.

Holiday parks and older housing on low‑lying land tend to bear the brunt. They are popular with tourists and retirees, and often more affordable than property on higher ground, but that lower cost reflects higher exposure to flooding.

Climate, infrastructure and insurance pressures

Beyond the immediate mess, the weekend storm has revived questions about how well Australia’s largest city is prepared for bursts of extreme rain that scientists say are becoming more likely as the climate warms.

Long‑term records kept by the Bureau of Meteorology show Sydney has just experienced its wettest six‑year stretch since observations began in 1858. From early 2020 to mid‑2025, more than 9,300 millimeters of rain fell at Observatory Hill. In 2022 alone, the city recorded 2,530 millimeters — its highest annual total on record.

Climate scientists say a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor — roughly 7 percent more per degree Celsius of warming — increasing the potential for heavier downpours when conditions line up.

“Coastal troughs and east‑coast lows are not new for New South Wales,” one senior climatologist said in a recent briefing. “What we are seeing is that when they do occur, there is more moisture available to them, so the heaviest rainfall events are becoming more intense.”

Infrastructure built to older standards is straining under those bursts. Drainage networks, culverts and stormwater channels in many suburbs were designed for “one‑in‑50‑year” or “one‑in‑100‑year” storms based on historical data. When local gauges suddenly experience rainfall rates associated with “one‑in‑200‑year” or rarer events, water simply has nowhere to go.

That has implications not only for engineering but for insurance. Flood and storm‑damage claims surged after east‑coast floods in 2021 and 2022. Consumer groups and insurers have warned that premiums in some high‑risk postcodes are climbing to the point where cover is unaffordable, or not offered at all.

Offshore impacts: beach water quality and shark activity

The storm’s effects did not stop when the rain eased. As swollen creeks and lagoons drained into the ocean, plumes of muddy freshwater spread along the coast, carrying debris and runoff from urban streets. Health authorities issued alerts for poor water quality at several beaches.

In the days after the downpour, shark experts pointed to that runoff as one factor in a spike in bull shark activity off Sydney. Four shark attacks were reported in New South Wales between January 18 and 20, three of them around Sydney beaches. One, involving a 12‑year‑old boy near Vaucluse, was fatal.

Specialists told broadcasters that the combination of heavy rain, warm water and murky, nutrient‑rich outflows created what one described as a “perfect storm” of conditions for bull sharks, which often move between rivers and coastal waters.

It was a reminder that extreme rainfall can trigger a chain of risks, from flash floods and landslides on land to ecological and safety hazards offshore.

Cleanup, and a familiar question

By Monday, the skies over Sydney had cleared. Commuters picked their way past piles of sodden carpets and ruined furniture stacked outside terraces in low‑lying streets. Golfers inspected the mud‑streaked fairways at Palm Beach. SES crews were still pumping water from basements and checking on unstable slopes.

The floodwaters will recede and roads will reopen, as they have after every major storm. But the records will remain: a January day wetter than any in nearly 40 years, in a decade already marked by record‑breaking rain.

For a city that has grown around its waterways and coast, the weekend’s deluge underscored a difficult reality. As bursts of extreme rain become more intense, the question is no longer whether Sydney will flood again, but how often — and how prepared it will be when the next band of cloud rolls in from the sea.