Family missing after heavy rain in Western Australia

Seven people are missing in Western Australia after parts of the outback in the country’s largest and least populated state were drenched with more than 17.5 centimeters of rain in 24 hours last weekend.

The record-breaking rain flooded parts of the Nullarbor Plain, a vast, largely arid area, closing roads and shutting down the main rail link to the east, both crucial freight links.

“This is not typical weather for the south-east of Western Australia,” said a warning from the state Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

The missing people, including four children, have not been seen for more than a day after leaving Kalgoorlie-Boulder, an outback town of 30,000, in two vehicles on Sunday, according to police in Western Australia.

One car was driven alone by an “older driver,” while the other car was believed to have had “an older driver and five other occupants, including four children” between the ages of 7 and 17, a police statement said. The missing people, a family, are believed to have returned home to the remote Aboriginal community of Tjuntjuntjarra, 400 miles to the northeast.

“There are concerns for the occupants of these two vehicles due to severe weather conditions” that have hampered search efforts, with low cloud hampering an aerial search, a police spokesman said. “It is not known how much food and water residents have in their possession.”

Since Friday morning, Rawlinna, an isolated community of 33 people, has received more than six inches of rain, more than half the region’s average annual rainfall of about six inches, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Photos posted on social media by Rawlinna Station, Australia’s largest sheep farm, show submerged farm equipment as Craig Chandler, a supervisor at the station, gets into a kayak to rescue chickens and move around the site.

“The Nullarbor is soaking it up and will be completely rejuvenated by this deluge, but I’m not so sure our buildings, possessions and trinkets will be so lucky,” said a message on the station’s radio. Facebook page on Monday.

Australia is in the middle of summer and extreme weather has also hit other parts of Western Australia. In the coastal resort town of Exmouth, in the state’s far north, temperatures were forecast to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, and meteorologists have warned that a tropical cyclone could be approaching the state.