MORE wild weather set to lash Australian coast: 'Up to 200mm'
La Nina is still packing a punch with heavy rain across eastern Australia likely next week.
It may be on the way out, but Australia’s third consecutive La Nina still has the country in its grasp.
Forecasters are warning of an intensifying trough on the horizon with the system set to drive “plenty of moisture” into eastern parts of Australia next week.
“The trough will deepen first around Queensland around Monday and Tuesday but then it will deepen further and also gain upper support, possibly from about Wednesday, over NSW and Victoria,” Weatherzone’s Felix Levesque told Yahoo News Australia
The meteorologist anticipates the worst of the weather will last for three days.
“We could be seeing a good storm event starting basically from Wednesday until Thursday, and possibly extending into Friday, and that could lead to some widespread heavy rainfall over NSW and more likely eastern Victoria,” he said.
Rainfall totals of up to 200mm on the way
While Mr Levesque points out that it’s still “too far out” to make any precise predictions, he says one model shows that the heaviest rainfall will be over southeastern NSW.
“Possibly bringing rainfall accumulations of maybe 100 to 200mm over some parts,” he adds, “as the system gets a good flow of moisture in from the Tasman and the Coral Sea, enhancing moisture and leading to heavy rainfall over the region.”
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“It should mostly be constrained to eastern NSW and Eastern Victoria, most likely along the coastal fringe, but as that trough deepens in the earlier days it should see some storms also popping up over western parts of the state as well.”
Southern Queensland is also in for a battering at the start of next week, but it “certainly doesn’t look astonishing” according to Mr Levesque, who says the weather pattern will be “mainly storm driven".
“So possibly a bit more hit and miss for those heavy and more impressive rainfall totals,” he said.
A saturated Sydney cops half a month’s rainfall in one hour
The deluge comes amid one of Sydney’s wettest Januarys since the 1980s after intense thunderstorms dumped half a month’s worth of rain in just one hour on Monday night.
More than 52mm fell at Observatory Hill between 5.20pm and 6.20pm, causing flash flooding across the city and bringing public transport to a halt. It takes the city’s main rain gauge for the month up to 191.4mm, making it the wettest January since 2016 and the second wettest since 1988.
“In 165 years of records, only 16 Januarys have seen more rain than this one,” said the Weatherzone’s Ben Domensino.
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