The Box

Widespread, soaking rain set to hit both sides of the country

Written by Jane Bunn - Jane's Weather | May 31, 2023 3:58:26 AM

Over the past week, we’ve seen rain extend inland through south-eastern Australia for the first time in weeks. We’re about to see a repeat of this - but it should go much further, spreading through much of the eastern states. 

After a lengthy stretch of cold fronts in the weather pattern that only affected those near the coast and ranges of southern Australia, the pattern shifted.

Two of these fronts were given an injection of tropical moisture, letting them spread that rain further inland in the southeast:

Above: Rainfall totals from the past week - rain spread inland through south-east Australia for the first time in weeks.

Over the next week, we’ll see a new pattern. A trough in the west is developing into a cutoff low, and it has a juicy feed of tropical moisture from the Indian Ocean.

This achieves two things. The ‘cutoff’ part means it moves slowly, and the ‘tropical moisture’ part means that it is laden with moisture - and both of those work together to produce widespread, soaking rain. 

The rain falls in the west on Wednesday and Thursday, and just a little bit of that spreads into the east on Friday into Saturday.

But the low hasn’t finished with us, and it should pick up a new feed of moisture from the Pacific Ocean - ready to cross the eastern states early next week, delivering 10 to 20mm through a large part of the east:

Above: Rainfall projections for the next week - rain is likely to affect large parts of south-west WA, as well as large parts of SA, VIC, TAS, NSW and southern QLD.

While that’s occurring, the west is in line for another big rain system - so that if you add the current system and the early next week system, a large part of the south-west picks up 20 to more than 50mm of rain. 

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