Festival medics say they have seen no puncture wounds or injection injuries.

A house on Sydney's Northern Beaches was almost destroyed by a landslide after severe storms ripped through the city last night and this morning.

The house, which is on a hill near Great Mackerel Beach, was almost taken out completely after heavy rain caused the earth above it to give way.

The debris, a mound of mud, soil and trees, stopped just short of collecting the house.

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One woman was treated by paramedics.

Several warnings are still in place for parts of Sydney as the city deals with flash flooding caused by a deluge of rain this weekend.

The SES has dealt with 2500 calls for help and 25 flood rescues from cars.

Around 3000 people are without power according to Ausgrid.

An early morning storm, moving westward from the coastline, swept over the city's south and west at around 5.30am, with south-west Sydney and the Blue Mountains being hit hard.

About 68mm of rain was recorded at Liverpool in the Georges River from midnight to 5.15am, with Peakhurst copping a drenching of 44mm of rain in just one hour between 3.30 and 4.30am, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

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The Northern Beaches were issued with several evacuation notices late last night.

Residents in the Narrabeen Lagoon area were urged to leave just before 11pm due to localised flooding.

An emergency warning was in place until early this morning, with the threat level now downgraded to Watch and Act, whilst some residents are being told they can return to their homes.

The Manly branch of the SES shared a photo showing Golf Parade in Manly completely submerged about 7am.

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The SES has reported making dozens of rescues in the past 24 hours, with State Duty Commander Sonya Oyston urged drivers to take extreme care on roads around the state today due to the already wet weather and risk of flash flooding.

"There has been a lot of flash flooding which has closed roads, and we anticipate some may remain closed for some time," she said.

"We're asking the community to remain patient, and make safe, sensible decisions to never drive into flooded roads."

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The wet weather has hit large parts of coastal NSW, continuing from yesterday's wet and windy day.

People in areas that may be impacted by floods are being urged to avoid creeks and storm drains, and to not drive through flood water in any circumstances.

Storms stretched across Sydney and the surrounding areas yesterday, with the Central Coast and Wollongong being lashed with hundreds of millimetres of rain in the last 48 hours.

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A woman was killed in the Southern Highlands yesterday afternoon when the car she was travelling in was struck by a tree branch.

A house in Mona Vale on Sydney's North Shore narrowly avoided being crushed by a tree, which landed instead on the driveway of the home.

Road closures, transport chaos around Sydney

The weather has also wreaked havoc with the state's roads and transport, though these are beginning to ease.

Trains are now running between Hornsby and Gosford after earlier bus replacements du to floods.

Buses briefly replaced light rail services on the L3 Line between Moore Park and Kingsford due to flooding at ES Marks in the Eastern Suburb., but the line has now reopened after floodwaters subsided.

Several roads remain closed across Sydney, including Wakehurst Parkway between North Narrabeen and Oxford Falls and Oxford Falls Road between Wakehurst Parkway and Aroona Road.

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Walkers now face steep steps to Oke Bay and tidal rock crossings on the route.

NZTA says the scale of damage means the closure will last weeks.

Some Northland areas had 200mm of rain and major flooding today.

A cyclist is in a serious condition after crashing in Pyes Pā, Tauranga.

An Indonesian passenger aircraft carrying 11 people has gone missing just before it was scheduled to land yesterday, while approaching a mountainous region in Sulawesi.

The turboprop ATR 42-500 operated by the Indonesia Air Transport was on its way from Yogyakarta to the capital city of South Sulawesi when it vanished from radar, Endah Purnama Sari, a spokesperson for the Transportation Ministry, said.

The plane was last tracked at 1.17pm (4.17pm AEDT) in the Leang-Leang area of Maros, a mountainous district of South Sulawesi province.

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Multiple search and rescue teams, supported by air force helicopters, drones and ground units have been deployed, Sari said in a statement.

Hopes for locating the wreckage grew after hikers on Mount Bulusaraung reported finding scattered debris, a logo consistent with Indonesia Air Transport markings, and small fires still burning at the scene.

“The sightings were reported to authorities and are being verified by rescue teams attempting to reach the area,” said Major General Bangun Nawoko, the South Sulawesi’s Hasanuddin military commander.

Sari said the plane disappeared shortly after being instructed by air traffic control to correct its approach alignment.

“After the last ATC instructions, radio contact was lost and controllers declared the emergency distress phase.”

She said rescue teams focused their search on the mountains where the aircraft, with eight crew members and three passengers from the Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry aboard, was believed to have deviated from its approach to Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport.

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Weather conditions at the time indicated clouds and eight-kilometre visibility, Sari said.

Steep terrain at Bulusaraung National Park linking Maros and Pangkep districts complicated the search efforts, Nawoko said.

Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries Sakti Wahyu Trenggono told a news conference late Saturday that three employees of his ministry were aboard the flight as part of an airborne maritime surveillance mission supporting Indonesia’s fisheries management operations.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation with more than 280 million people, relies heavily on air transport and ferries to connect its over 17,000 islands.

The Southeast Asian country has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air in recent years because of poorly enforced safety standards.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei branded US President Donald Trump a “criminal” for supporting protesters in Iran, and blamed demonstrators for causing thousands of deaths.

In a speech broadcast by state television, Khamenei said the protests had left “several thousand” people dead — the first indication from an Iranian leader of the extent of the casualties from the wave of protests that began on December 28 and led to a bloody crackdown.

“In this revolt, the US president made remarks in person, encouraged seditious people to go ahead and said: ‘We do support you, we do support you militarily'," Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, said.

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He reiterated an accusation that the United States seeks domination over Iran’s economic and political resources.

“We do consider the US president a criminal, because of casualties and damages, because of accusations against the Iranian nation,” he said.

He described the protesters as “foot soldiers” of the US and said they had destroyed mosques and educational centres.

“Through hurting people, they killed several thousand of them,” he said.

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In response, Trump called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign.

“The man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” Trump told Politico in an interview on Saturday (Sunday morning AEDT).

“His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.”

“It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran," he added.

Trump had sounded a conciliatory tone

The back-and-forth rhetoric came a day after Trump sounded a conciliatory tone, saying “Iran cancelled the hanging of over 800 people” and adding “I greatly respect the fact that they cancelled”.

He did not clarify whom he spoke to in Iran to confirm the state of any planned executions. His comments were a sign he may be backing away from a military strike.

The official IRNA news agency reported that Tehran Prosecutor General Ali Salehi, referring to Trump's remarks about the cancellation of the death sentence of 800 protesters, said: “Trump always makes futile and irrelevant statements. Our attitude is severe, preventive and fast.”

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He did not elaborate.

In recent days, Trump had told protesting Iranians that “help is on the way” and that his administration would “act accordingly” if the killing of demonstrators continued or if Iranian authorities executed detained protesters.

In his speech, Khamenei said rioters were armed with live ammunition that was imported from abroad, without naming any countries.

“We do not plan, we do not take the country toward war. But we do not release domestic offenders, worse than domestic offenders; there are international offenders. We do not let them alone either,” he said, and urged officials to pursue the cases," he said.

An uneasy calm

Iran has returned to an uneasy calm after harsh repression of protests that began December 28 over Iran’s ailing economy.

The crackdown has left at least 3095 people dead, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeding that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalling the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.

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The agency has been accurate throughout the years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the toll.

Iranian officials have repeatedly accused the US and Israel of fomenting unrest in the country.

On Friday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused the US and Israel of meddling in the unrest.

Reports of limited internet access briefly restored

There have been no signs of protests for days in Tehran, where shopping and street life have returned to normal, and Iranian state media have not reported any new unrest.

During the protests, authorities blocked all internet access on January 8. On Saturday, text messaging and very limited internet services began functioning again briefly in parts of Iran, witnesses said.

Cellphone text messaging began operating overnight, while users were able to access local websites through a domestic internet service. Some also reported limited access to international internet services via the use of a virtual private network, or VPN.

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The extent of access and what was behind it wasn’t immediately clear. It's possible that officials were turning on some systems for the start of the Iranian working week, as the outage has affected businesses, particularly banks in the country, trying to handle transactions.

Internet traffic monitoring service Cloudflare and internet access advocacy group NetBlocks reported very slight increases in connectivity on Saturday morning, while Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency also reported limited internet access. It did not offer an explanation.

No new protests reported after exiled Iranian royal's call for further demonstrations

A call by Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi for protesters to take to the streets again from Saturday to Monday did not appear to have been heeded by Saturday afternoon.

Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, enjoys support from die-hard monarchists in the diaspora but has struggled to gain wider appeal within Iran.

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However, that has not stopped him from presenting himself as the transitional leader of Iran if the government were to fall.

There were protests in London overnight outside the Iranian embassy, with one man trying to steal the flag from the front.

Police arrested 14 people for disorder, with some being injured.

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Judge: ‘I have to plant you somewhere where you will be safe, where you will be loved.’

Climate change could be driving the emergence of sinkholes across Australia, experts say.

Several sinkholes have cracked wide open in multiple states in recent months – including a massive hole on a football field in Melbourne's north-west and a crater in the middle of the street in Adelaide's inner-south.

There are both environmental and man-made reasons for these suburban sinkholes.

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But increased extreme weather events could make them far more prevalent.

Sinkholes mostly occur in areas underlain by limestone or carbonate rocks, which can concave due to chemical weathering, Melbourne University's Infrastructure Engineering Associate Professor Shiao Huey Chow told nine.com.au.

Water is one of the root causes, which erodes bedrock over time and creates caverns.

"The main environmental agents for the chemical weathering are water and temperature," Chow explained.

"Therefore, in areas where you can find limestone, any increase in temperature or changes in rainfall patterns due to climate change can accelerate the dissolution and introduce higher sinkhole risk."

Research has found there is evidence linking sinkholes to climate change, including droughts and floods.

Heavy rainfall and surface flooding can trigger the collapse of normally stable cavities and erode soil to form new "subterranean voids", according to a scientific journal published on Nature.com.

"Additionally, rising water tables – driven by increased rainfall and storm frequency – may further destabilise ground," the research states.

Heatwaves and drought can also contribute to sinkholes.

"It has been shown that sinkhole frequency in karst environments of north-east Spain increase[s] during drought," the journal notes.

Countries such as China and Iran have karstic landscapes, which are at high risk of sinkholes.

In China alone, there is around 600,000km² of ground which could collapse.

Some metropolitan areas in Australia may be under threat of sinkholes developing suddenly due to plumbing issues or movement weakening the ground above old mine shafts.

Business development manager at Rectify Group Phil Irwin said "people have no idea" of how many areas are at risk.

There could be countless undocumented mine shafts that authorities do not know about, he said.

"Sinkholes can develop anywhere, anytime," Irwin said.

"Some of the mine shafts are recorded, not all of them were, because you just had people digging holes left, right and centre.

"We've encountered them when we've been trying to treat people's properties."

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Irwin warned sinkholes can pop up in your backyard during construction work.

"If you've got a pipe that's cracked and a bit of soil falls into the pipe, it could bubble out and collapse," he said.

"We've had plenty of those in the past but they're easily rectified because they're typically not very deep.

"But it's when you've got something that's a little bit larger and it's involving infrastructure like roads, that's where it's a little bit more significant."

What are the early warning signs of a sinkhole?

There are a few signs that point to an eventual sinkhole.

This can include structural issues such as cracks in the walls and floor, or doors and windows that don't close properly.

On the ground, evidence of sinkholes can be buried items becoming visible, small ponds forming, depressions spots on the fround or slumping trees and fences.

How do you get rid of sinkholes?

Sinkholes are rectified using different methods depending on the size.

Irwin recommends resin injection, which involves stabilising the ground by injecting expanding polyurethane resin into the soil through small holes.

Bigger sinkholes, such as collapsed mine shafts, can usually be fixed by pumping cellular concrete into the cavity.

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