We’ve got more showers moving through today, putting our paddocks and playing fields under water once again 🙁

If you have a looked at the radar from the early hours of this morning you would be forgiven for thinking it was looking drier – however that combination of cold air up high and a very wet and warm low level feed from the Coral Sea came together to develop yet more showers and storms moving in from the north east. Here’s how it looked on the radar:

It always amazes me to watch how quickly things can change – looking drier one hour, much wetter the next. No big suprise when the weather charts look like this though:

You can clearly see the onshore flow and inland upper trough in the current satellite image. The red arrow shows the location of the upper system, with dry air moving in from the south behind it. The blue arrow shows the deep feed of warm, wet air moving in from the north to the east of the system:

The upper system will pivote slowly east over the next couple of days and that will help the rain train slowly move away. Here’s the animation from the European model – you can see the bigger falls forecast to our north, with showers for us and a clearance late weekend:

You can also see the models forecasting the risk of a surface low moving in to our north as well…so looking like some further big falls to come for those areas, with lighter but still potentially significant falls across our region. Here’s the forecast total rainfall to end of tomorrow from the high resolution ACCESS C model:

…and to get some idea of how wet it is already looking to our north here’s a current image from a traffic cam at Laidley, across the border in SE QLD:

With the ongoing showers flooding has to be a risk for our region – however models are still indicating that while the rain intensifies to our north it should lessen across our region through the day. There are no warnings out at this time and rivers and creeks are only slowly responding to the current rain…but worth keeping an eye on the BoM warnings page and local social media through the day if the rain continues.

Looking further ahead and we are still deep in a La Nina pattern. Here’s how the sea temperatures look right now – a classic La Nina look in the Pacific, and with warm waters also focussed to the NW of Aus we are going to see wetter than average conditions across much of the country over the coming months:

As such it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to see these forecasts already coming out for next weekend:

Worth emphasising that we are a long way out from the follow up event, and details will definitely change through this week…but worth being aware that even when we finally see the clearance of this current event, there could be more on the horizon. No sign of any sustained dry weather at this time. The La Nina forecast for the coming months looks like this – with further strengthening possible:

Not what we want to see right now. I’ll post again with significant updates, but in the meantime take care out there and keep an eye on the radar and warnings.

Thanks as always to Kombu / Snapfrozen for ongoing support and sponsorship

Thanks to Weather Chaser / BoM / NOAA / Tropical Tidbits / Meteologix / Bellingen Weather / Anthony Cornelius for images