More than 30,000 people were under flood evacuation orders or warnings in the Sydney area on Monday as heavy rainfall continued to pummel Australia's largest city.
State authorities warned residents to brace themselves for continuing downpours on Monday before conditions are expected to ease by Tuesday.
Days of massive downpours have caused some areas to experience their fourth major flooding event within just 18 months, with low-lying areas in Sydney's west and those around the Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers on the city's inland outskirts most at risk.
Aerial footage of the suburb of Camden in Sydney's west showed long stretches of road completely underwater and floodwaters rising to submerge parts of buildings.
The Sydney area has already received four times as much rain as it usually does during the entire month of July, according to media reports.
While the amount of rainfall is comparable to previous severe weather events, it has fallen within a shorter period of time, Jane Golding of the Bureau of Meteorology said on Monday.
Rainfall during Sydney's last major flooding event in March was "stacked up over seven days," Golding said, whereas "this time we are seeing really high rainfall rates on individual days."
Some of the areas affected are still in the process of recovering after days of rain in February and March caused historic flooding.
Extreme weather events have long afflicted Australia, and these have only been exacerbated by climate change in recent years. In mid-January, for example, large parts of the country were enduring a heatwave with temperatures of more than 50 degrees Celsius recorded in the west of the country.
