We’ve got a change moving through early this week that has the potential to bring some rain. It actually looks like it will bring a lot of rain to the south of us, but more touch and go for our region. Some models show reasonable totals but others show very little. It doesn’t look like drought breaking rains for us – and almost definitely not drought breaking for up on the ranges where a number of very large fires are burning. However….it’s better than we’ve seen for some time so having a look in more detail, here’s the ECMWF forecast for what will be happening at the surface and up high over the next few days. The forecast hour is at the top:

You can see a cold pool moving up from down south, combined with a trough moving across at the surface. That cold air moving through up high generates a tight but transient surface low on the east coast…anywhere to the south of that low will see some decent rain from this event….but sadly for us it looks like we’ll be to the north so will see much lower totals. You can see this reflected in the totals forecast until 10pm Wednesday from 4 keys models:

…If only that low was another 200km north! Beyond that there is not much rain in the short term outlook, but the good news is that once we get this Monday out of the way the fire danger levels look less elevated than they have recently – at least in the short term….until we get good rain across NE NSW every dry change will bring the risk of significant fire.