Australia Weather News

Vast parts of the Northern Territory are being soaked by heavy rain and flooding is reaching peak levels in the Top End community of Daly River.

In a rare sight for lucky travellers water is cascading off the 550-million-year-old face of Uluru.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), the nearby town of Yulara recorded 55 millimetres of rain over Sunday and Monday.

Further north in Alice Springs the rain has filled up the usually dry Todd River, sending it surging through the town and bringing excited locals down to the riverbed to see for themselves.

BOM data shows about 70mm of rain has fallen in Alice Springs since last Thursday.

The rain in Central Australia has been welcomed by many but its impact on infrastructure in remote areas has caused havoc for some.

Flooding has closed Tanami Road, which connects Alice Springs to many Aboriginal communities to the West Australian border, affecting thousands of residents.

About 80 kilometres south of Alice Springs the community of Santa Teresa/Ltyentye Apurte has been cut off, with its road declared impassable from the turn-off at Alice Springs Airport.

Atyenhenge Atherre Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Ellie Kamara said the rain had left the unsealed road — already in a poor state — in the most "terrible condition" she had seen in half a decade.

"It's been completely decimated — the top soil, the top gravel, has been washed away completely and it's just exposed the most enormous potholes," she said.

Ms Kamara said teachers and social services had been unable to access the community due to large sections of the road being washed away and that renal patients had been transferred to Alice Springs to stay while they received treatment.

Further south, a number of remote communities, including Titjikala, have been experiencing telecommunications outages, which Ms Kamara said was due to rain and cloud cover affecting their solar power.

A Telstra spokesperson said flooding in the area had affected technology in a number of communities and was preventing safe access to the tower for repairs, but noted a technician was headed to the community to investigate further and it was hoped service would be restored soon.

"Satellite services are not affected … we are doing our best to keep [the communities] connected," the spokesperson said.

West of Alice Springs, flooding and impassable roads have forced the closure of a number of national parks, including the Finke Gorge National Park, most destinations in the Tjoritja/West MacDonnell National Park and waterholes further west.

To the east, the N'Dhala Gorge Nature Park and Arltunga Historical Reserve have also been closed.

Daly River flooding reaches peak

In the Top End, flooding at Daly River reached its predicted 14.1-metre peak — surpassing the 14m major flood level — on Tuesday afternoon, according to BOM data.

Almost 300 people were evacuated from the community — located 220 kilometres south-west of Darwin — last week and only a handful stayed behind.

In a statement earlier on Tuesday, the BOM said the flood peak was expected to be "prolonged".

"The river level is likely to fall below the major flood level from Wednesday into Thursday and is expected to remain above the moderate flood level for the rest of the week and into the weekend," the statement said.

"In the upstream reaches, small renewed rises have been observed in the past 24 hours due to local rainfall, which may prolong elevated levels along the Daly River over the next few days."

Speaking to ABC Radio Darwin, incident controller Gavin Kennedy said the Daly River residents who had been evacuated to the Territory's capital would receive financial relief payments from this Thursday.

The office for federal Minister for Emergency Management Kristy McBain said in a statement that residents would be "eligible for payments of $611 per adult and $309 per child, capped at $1,537 per family".

Mr Kennedy said residents would receive 25 per cent of their payment while they were in Darwin and that the rest would be made available when they returned to Daly River.

He said "a lot has to occur" before the evacuees could be returned home.

"We're planning at a feverish pace to make that transition as quickly as possible … but there is water throughout the community, every road within the community has water across it," Mr Kennedy said.

"There are some [homes] that have water going underneath the doors, but nothing really that we've seen so far that is above ankle height going through any houses."