We had a sign of the season to come yesterday with the temperature hitting 31C in town and some beautiful sunshine. It was dry out there as well – the recent wet day has long gone and we had the dew point hovering close to zero – hence the Very High fire danger rating. You can see the temperature in blue and the dew point in green in the plot below:

We’ve been fairly dry over the last month – continuing the trend of winter. Here’s the daily rainfall over the last month – and you can see the one stand out day from a couple of weeks back when forecast showers stalled over Bellingen and gave town a decent dump (while other areas around the valleys missed out):

The current change moving through is going to stall close to our region. With cold air moving in up high and a change close by we will see the risk of more unsettled weather over today and tomorrow. We could see some showers develop today and then more widespread showery weather through tomorrow as the peak of the cold air up high moves through. Here’s the forecast rainfall for today and tomorrow from one of the key models:

That model gives us the following total rain accumulations through today and tomorrow:

You can see the totals build over the hills – but also worth noting that other models give us lower totals, so we could end up with significantly less. Here’s the total from the American model:

The difference comes about as we are close to the northern end of the forecast wetter weather – so if we find it sitting just to our south we’ll remain drier, but if it moves a little further north we could end up with some higher totals. Even the top end totals however will only make a temporary dent in drier-than-normal pattern, as once we hit midweek we’ll be back into drier weather again and will see it warm up once again as we move into next weekend.

Those drier conditions are typical of what we have seen through much of winter, however the climate drivers are still looking wetter than average as we move through Spring and into Summer….before likely drying off again through Autumn as the La Nina fades away. Here’s an animation of the forecast rain anomalies over the next 6 weeks – and you can see it look wetter as we move further into Spring:

That fits with the monthly forecast. Here’s an animation of the forecast conditions over the next 9 months (from October through June next year). You can see it looking wet through the first half of the period, before drying out a little as we head into next winter:

So it’s worth enjoying any rain we see over the next couple of days before it dries out again…then worth enjoying the drier weather before we hit much wetter patterns once again. Whatever it does, wishing you a fantastic day and look forward to posting again when we have some more interesting weather coming up!

Thanks to: Kombu Wholefoods | Snapfrozen | Tropical Tidbits | Meteologix