Rainfall on Australia’s east coast is expected to decrease, but flooding is expected to continue.

 

Heavy rain was expected to ease across Australia’s east coast, but floodwaters are expected to persist for days in New South Wales, where 15,000 people were nervously waiting for evacuation orders on Tuesday.

Since last week, 18,000 residents of Australia’s most populous state have fled their homes, with reports that the cleanup could take until April.

Gladys Berejiklian, the Premier of New South Wales, said on Tuesday that many weather fronts were still affecting vast swaths of the state.

In less than a week, some areas of the state received two-thirds of their annual rainfall.

The rain emergency is expected to end by late Wednesday, but “floodwaters will continue for some time,” according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Morrison said, “I’m advised that the rain and flood situation remains volatile and extremely complex.”

By late Tuesday, the skies were expected to clear over parts of Sydney and the north coast.

“It’s almost unbelievable, but we’ll see blue skies and sunshine in western Sydney and the Mid North Coast later this afternoon,” government meteorologist Agata Imielska said.

“It is important to note that even though the sky will clear and the sun will shine again, flooding will continue and the flood risk will persist,” Imielska said.

According to Morrison, the New South Wales government has already asked 1,000 security staff to assist in the flood clean-up.

The flooding rain had spread down the New South Wales coast, almost as far as the Victoria state border in the south, and across the Queensland state border in the north.