You've seen the images of metre-deep foam on Gold Coast beaches, the eroded sands of Byron Bay, the flooded roads as a low pressure system and moist onshore flow lashed southeast Queensland and northeast NSW over the last few days.

NICK OF TIME: Rescuers save a dog that became lost in a huge cloud of sea foam, caused by storms that have battered the Gold Coast of Australia. https://t.co/31QhLnnEUk pic.twitter.com/c5Bc9hucwB

— ABC News (@ABC) December 15, 2020

Perhaps you also saw the incredible rainfall figures in northeast NSW and southeast Queensland, as La Nina finally made its presence felt on parts of Australia's east coast.

Incredibly heavy rainfall drenched areas like the Springbrook Plateau in the Gold Coast Hinterland, which received in the vicinity of 1,000 mm. That's almost a metre of rain.

There were also falls in excess of 500 mm in northern NSW. That's the equivalent of Adelaide's annual rainfall in just a few days.

The numbers tell one part of the story. The dramatc images tell another. And now we can appreciate how this intense weather system played out at an atmospheric level.

Weatherzone developer Andrew Miskelly put this graphic together which shows how the weather system developed from last Friday (December 11) to 9 am this Tuesday (December 15) - the four-day period during which rainfall was heaviest.

Unusual to see a retrograde upper low at northern NSW latitudes? The system - responsible for earlier torrential rain over NE NSW and SE QLD - continues to draw tropical moisture around its eastern flank and will also aid instability. pic.twitter.com/H5Xql61SDr

— Andrew Miskelly (@andrewmiskelly) December 14, 2020

The part where things get really dramatic is from about 25 seconds onwards, where a feed of extremely moist air (greeny-white on the graphic) surges inland, with strong uplift over the ranges of SE Qld and NE NSW.

It's at this point that the heaviest rain rates were recorded.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasa can also be seen developing in the top right of the video. It has just been upgraded to a Category 5 as of Tuesday morning, and is threatening the island nation of Fiji. We'll keep you updated on its progress.

Meanwhile the heavy rain is now dissipating over NE NSW and SE Qld. Further rain is likely along the entire NSW and southern Queensland coast for much fo the next week or so, but it's unlikely we'll see anything as extreme as last weekend.

You can keep updated with flood and weather warnings here for Queensland, and here for NSW.