We’ve had another week of fires all around us, but nothing yet in our valleys which is fantastic. Yesterday we had the promised storms rolling through, but unlike other areas we managed more rain (for some) than thunder. Here’s how the rain looked across our area for yesterday:

You can see a really strong focus towards the coast. Thora and west scored little if any, while closer to the coast there were totals up to 14mm (at Sawtell).

Coming up we’ve got a mainly dry week and it should slowly warm up. Inland will see some big heat through the week but closer to the coast we’ll have onshore breezes to moderate the temperatures – though could still get up to the mid 30s at times. Onshore winds mean higher humidity levels (and hopefully less smoke) – and they are coming about because the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) has turned less negative over recent days:

All looking a little better for now – but worth watching that forecast dip back down into the real negatives towards the start of December. A long way off but an indication that the fire weather might not be over and we could see some more blow up days in the coming weeks. In the shorter term however the moderation in the SAM could even bring us a little more rain. No signs yet of any big totals but some of the models are showing an increased chance of rain in a week or so:

Some way off but good to have something to watch with local rivers are running dry. The Kalang was close to dry yesterday and the Bellinger is looking like this:

Currently sitting at Thora with a throughput of 4.3ML/day. Height is 1.221m. This is the lowest level since current records began in 1982.