Well the rain certainly arrived. The upper low moved north, sat to our north, and is now sitting to our north west. This brings the rain in from more of a north easterly direction – but also puts us in the very favourable south east quarter of the upper low for big rains. Here’s the latest satellite image – you can see the stream of showers moving in from the ocean. I’ve also marked the approximate location of the upper low:

…and here is the resultant radar images since 3am this morning, courtesy of the excellent weather chaser website:

You can see the band slowly moving to the south east – and later on today we should see some improvement in the conditions. In the meantime we’re seeing some very heavy point totals from this band and rivers are rising again quickly. Once the band clears through the rivers should slowly start to fall – though with some of the highest tides of the year happening this week, coastal areas will still see rises and falls with the tides.

We’ve had well over 300mm in town so far, with much higher totals on the hills. Here’s the latest one week rain totals from the BoM:

Current river conditions can be found on the Bellingen Weather river page. Streaming footage from the Kombu Floodcam can be found here.

Looking further ahead, we are entering (1) our traditional wet season, (2) seeing a strong La Nina in the Pacific and (3) finally seeing the atmosphere connect with the La Nina and other climate drivers to bring us the likelihood of more wetter than average weather as we move through summer. Here’s the latest forecast from one of the key models for January:

…so while it will likely dry out a little in the short term (hard for it to get much wetter!) there is every chance we’ll see more wet spells over the coming few months. I’ll post updates as needed.

Images: BSCH / Meteologix / Tropical Tidbits / Weather Chaser