Three years ago, environmental and weather factors screamed that NSW was entering a fire season on a scale unseen. Now, those same factors are stacking up in the reverse. The Bureau of Meteorology has issued severe storm and river flood warnings.

I’ve been watching our rivers bleed out over the landscape, some with multiple major flood pulses along their lengths. The unpredictability of the storm system threatens areas with potential flash floods.

River inundation is a slow destroyer of crops and inland towns, but flash floods are the killers. They are very difficult to spot until they actually start to happen. I’ve been attempting to follow these systems and find the storms at their most visually impressive.

Areas that once looked like desert now look like oceans. The incredible fury of the water releases exploding out at Wyangala Dam sound like a steam train or a tsunami. It truly is an inland tsunami.

The entire state has experienced major floods and Herald photographers, such as my colleagues Rhett Wyman and Brook Mitchell, are committed to telling the stories of people suffering in these disasters.

Floods come with their own set of potential dangers that affect lives – foot infections, sunburn, dehydration, gastro and infected insect bites along with holes and submerged debris.

These images are from the past few weeks and give a glimpse of the birth and growth of a slowly growing flood disaster that I fear has not peaked in its ferocity or scale.