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A Sunshine Coast man has died trying to cross a flooded road at Kilcoy, north of Brisbane, as heavy rain continues across south-east Queensland.
Emergency services were called to Mary Smokes Creek Road just before 4pm AEST after a person witnessed a vehicle sinking in rising flood waters.
A short time later, officers retrieved the body of a man in his 60s.
Police say the death is a tragic reminder of the dangers of crossing flooded causeways.
South-east Queensland is on flood alert as the weather bureau predicts up to 200 millimetres of rain will fall in the next 24 hours.
The bureau's senior forecaster Michelle Berry says heavy falls have already drenched the region.
"We've actually seen around 80 millimetres recorded in Toowoomba now since 9am (AEST), so that's particularly heavy rainfalls occurring through there," she said.
"Also similar totals around that Sunshine Coast hinterland and Esk area."
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While the rain is nowhere near as heavy as that recorded during the Australia Day long weekend when ex-cyclone Oswald caused widespread flooding, authorities are still warning that flash flooding is possible from Bundaberg south to Brisbane.
Fraser Coast Mayor Gerard O'Connell says residents are worried by the latest rainfall.
"This is a bit of a depressing sight quite frankly," he said.
"After four weeks where we had the chance to overcome severe weather of the Australia Day weekend, now we're facing up to the prediction of really, really heavy rain.
"What we're seeing from the Bureau of Meteorology at the moment is rainfall in the vicinity of 100 to 200 millimetres.
"And that's fairly significant and it's going to see localised flooding and, of course, roads will be cut."
The Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Pomona has already been hit by flash flooding.
The fire station and a secondhand depot are flooded, several homes have water flowing through their yards and roads are cut.
Brisbane City Council is keeping watch and providing sandbags to residents, but it is hoping the slow-moving rain depression means less chance of flooding.
Gympie residents and business-owners are keeping a nervous watch on the Mary River, which has flooded four times in the past year.
Mayor Ron Dyne says the weather bureau is predicting a flood peak lower than four weeks ago when businesses and homes were inundated.
'Drain down mode'
Water management authority Seqwater is coordinating low-level releases from Wivenhoe and North Pine dams as a precaution.
Seqwater spokesman Mike Foster said the releases are likely to continue well into tomorrow.
"We're still very much in what we like to call 'drain down mode', which is just bringing those levels back to that temporary full supply or, in the case of Wivenhoe, maintaining it at that temporary full supply," he said.
"Whether we need to escalate those releases in both dams will very much depend on what sort of rainfall eventuates overnight.
"But again, the sort of size of releases that we're doing in comparison to the Australia Day weekend are certainly well under the sort of releases we're doing over that period.
"But we'll wait and see what mother nature brings tonight."
Bruce Grady from Emergency Management Queensland (EMQ) says residents across the south-east should be prepared for any flooding.
"We are starting to see some localised flooding, so again our message to people in vehicles, if it's flooded, forget it," he said.
The heavy rainfall caught out a school bus this morning when it became stranded in flash floods at Acacia Ridge on Brisbane's south side.
A group of 16 school children had to be ferried to safety by a swift water rescue team.
Thousands still isolated
In New South Wales, emergency services on the mid and far-north coasts are focusing on re-supplying communities isolated by floodwaters.
Water levels are dropping and people are returning to their homes, but more than 19,000 people remain isolated.
SES spokeswoman Michelle Mavroyeni says it is a big job to provide them with essentials.
"What we are now doing is making sure the communities around those areas who still have an evacuation order over them, or previously had but it's now been lifted, are being looked after," she said.
Evacuation orders are still current for parts of Kempsey, Port Macquarie and Hastings.
A major inconvenience is the Pacific Highway which is cut into sections, making travel between Sydney and the state's north difficult.
The roads authority says it is not able to say when the highway will be opened between Kempsey and Clybucca or Grafton and Iluka.
Rusty intensifying
Meanwhile, Tropical Cyclone Rusty is continuing to intensify as it tracks towards the stretch of coast in Western Australia known as cyclone alley.
This afternoon the category two system was 295 kilometres north of Port Hedland and 345 kilometres west of Broome and nearly stationary.
The weather bureau says Rusty is likely to remain a slow-moving system, making it difficult to predict when and where it will cross the coast.
The bureau says further intensification is likely as the cyclone approaches the coast, adding there is a high risk that Rusty will cross the coast as a severe tropical cyclone.
A cyclone warning is current for coastal areas from Cape Leveque to Mardie, while a cyclone watch is current for coastal areas for adjacent inland areas of the Pilbara including Marble Bar, Nullagine and Millstream.
Topics: rainfall, weather, floods, emergency-incidents, kilcoy-4515, maroochydore-4558, brisbane-4000, bundaberg-4670, pomona-4568, gympie-4570, wa, nsw
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