Flood watch on favourite hotspots across NSW

These include places such as Yamba, Grafton, Port Macquarie and Dubbo.

“The beautiful coastal town of Yamba, a mecca with holiday-makers, is named at number eight, Grafton in the Northern Rivers comes in at number 13, with bustling Port Macquarie, on the mid-north coast, at number 15. The Central Western town of Dubbo sneaks in at number 20 on the list.”

The suburb at the most risk? It’s Narrabri, which takes out the number one spot for the suburb most affected by flooding now, and the suburb to be most affected by flooding in 30 years.

Following down the rank is northern NSW’s Moree, the Central West’s Forbes, Walgett in the state’s north, and the Riverina’s Moama.

Concerningly, the research highlights that the top 20 suburbs listed at risk for flooding now will remain almost in the same rank for suburbs at risk in 30 years’ time.

Grafton is the only outlier, moving up one place from 13th in 2024 to 12th place in the 30-year forecast.

Groundsure CEO Dan Montagnani gave an explanation for this trend, saying “the nature of flood risk is primarily governed by topography”.

As to how the modelling was developed, he said: “The data and models use high-resolution topographical data, detailed land cover information, and weather models to accurately simulate flood depths and extents.”

He further explained that the data evaluated by Royal HaskoningDHV’s division Twinn creates “various scenarios, including surface water, river and tidal flooding, and integrates climate models to provide flood risk assessments in the context of climate change”.

In light of these findings, InfoTrack global head of property John Ahern said the Groundsure ClimateIndex reports will allow property lawyers and conveyancers to be better placed to inform their buyers.

“That’s more important than ever with flooding an ongoing risk for many regional locations in Australia,” he said.