weather may spread to the ore-rich pilbara

Something I thought WPG holders might be interested in as it may play a part in the stock later... Any hold up in supply wall coming from the pilbara or slow down in production will send prices rocketing at just the right time for WPG...

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AS Queensland continues to work through the flood crisis, forecasters warn the bad weather may spread to the ore-rich Pilbara region.

Most of Western Australia's Pilbara region, which is responsible for a third of global iron ore exports, has a 70 per cent chance of excess rainfall over the coming three months, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Patrick Ward, a meteorologist at the Bureau's Perth office, said that the region's iron ore mines and ports and booming offshore petroleum industry could be hit. "With all the projects going on up there at the minute it's a big deal," said Mr Ward. "Some of these places have a 24-hour shutdown period so if we forecast a cyclone in their area they have to shut down and can lose millions of dollars. These are big decisions."

The Pilbara is also expected to face above-average cyclone activity over the coming months, with 11 to 12 cyclones expected of which just three have so far formed. Tropical Cyclone Vince is currently circling off the Pilbara coast but is expected to stall offshore, dumping rainfall of only 15 milliliters-25 milliliters over the region, Mr Ward said.

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Queensland had its wettest year and wettest December on record in 2010, while the year was the third-wettest on record for the country as a whole.

Large swathes of land north and west of Brisbane received up to 10 centimetres of rain an hour earlier in the week from the slow-moving band of rain which caused the bulk of the flash flooding which swept through Toowoomba on Monday night.

The unusual weather has been the result of the "La Nina" climate pattern, a roughly five-yearly event in the southern Pacific Ocean which causes additional rainfall over Australia and droughts on the coast of South America.

The Bureau of Meteorology's rainfall outlook for the first three months of the year gives a 70 per cent chance of above-median rainfall for a large slice of Australia's east coast stretching from Sydney to Brisbane and west as far as the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge.

In addition, six or seven tropical cyclones are expected in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, of which only one has struck so far. "Cyclones can cross inland from central and northern Queensland and turn into monsoon rain depressions and bring rainfall down to the south and southeast," said Bryan Rolstoe, a senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology in Brisbane. "That can happen right into March."

Southeast Queensland Water Grid, which operates the Brisbane region's network of dams and reservoirs, said that releases from the Wivenhoe Dam which has held back much of the upstream flood waters on the Brisbane River would increase in the coming days to relieve pressure on the reservoir. At the peak on Tuesday night, the Wivenhoe was at 191 per cent of its normal capacity and releasing water at a rate of 645,000 million litres a day.

That rate has now been reduced to 215,000 million litres a day, against inflows of 121,000 million litres into the reservoir, but will increase to 301,000 million litres after the worst of the flood waters pass Brisbane later Thursday.

"This increase is unlikely to cause a second significant rise in the river and is necessary in order to relieve Wivenhoe Dam's swollen flood storage compartment in order to create space for further rainfall and inflows," the operator said.