Severe storms and flooding in southern and eastern Australia over the past week have triggered thousands of claims across a swathe of the country. 

IAG says as of 11am today it had received 2129 claims since November 24, including 1062 from NSW, 519 from Victoria, 391 from SA and 157 from Queensland. 

Suncorp has received more than 1100 claims, with the majority of those in NSW, followed by Queensland, SA and Victoria.

“The vast majority of the claims were for home (more than 900), followed by motor (more than 200) with rain the main cause, followed by hail, wind and flood,” a spokesman said.

The top three most impacted locations were Caboolture in Queensland, Sanctuary Point in NSW and Elimbah in Queensland.

Allianz as of this morning had received more than 800 claims, with NSW and SA being the most impacted states.  

The wild weather affected parts of SA and Victoria first, including Naracoorte and Torquay, while later in the week hard-hit regions included north-west Victoria, the South Coast of NSW and Deniliquin, and eastern Gippsland. Storms have also affected Queensland. 

The Bureau of Meteorology says a low pressure system dragged moisture down from the tropics and pushed it into the south-eastern parts of the country. The NSW SES had responded to 1307 incidents by Thursday afternoon and conducted 13 flood rescues. 

Point Perpendicular at Jervis Bay received 316mm of rainfall over the past week, Ulladulla 248mm and Mallacoota in Victoria 243mm. 

Aon Senior Catastrophe Research Analyst Thomas Mortlock says last week’s weather is a reminder that such troughs can still form under El Nino conditions. 

“They say no two El Ninos are alike, but this one is doing a pretty good La Nina impression at the moment,” he says on LinkedIn. 

“Something that is often overlooked - perhaps because it occupies the ‘twilight zone’ between weather and climate modelling - is that the multi-decadal state of the Pacific Ocean is still La Nina-like and has been for the past ~25 years.” 

A shift in the background state is overdue, he says.