New South Wales is expecting a wet weekend of heavy rain, with little hope for sunny and dry conditions in the coming week.
“What we have seen as spotty, intermittent shower activity across the coast is really going to fill in and become persistent rainfall,” Angus Hines, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Showers have spotted the east coast in what was a damp and dreary week for NSW, with some locations seeing 50mm of rain over the past 24 hours.
On Friday, thunderstorms were expected to develop across western parts of NSW, with risk of severe thunderstorms pushing into southern Queensland. That wet weather would drift east to the NSW coast on Saturday afternoon.
Sunday “is looking to be really the very wet day for NSW”, Hines said, with the east coast expecting long spells of rain.
The Illawarra district, Sydney metro area and Hunter coast would see the most rainfall, with a potential for 100mm of rain to fall through the course of the weekend.
“That is certainly enough to cause disruption,” Hines said. “Things like water across roads, major traffic, potentially minor flooding.
“We could certainly see some impact on the ground from the rainfall, especially on Sunday.”
Throughout Monday, skies would begin clearing from south to north. But it was not expected to return to clear, dry and sunny conditions, Hines said, with showers and cloudy skies set to stick around through much of the coming week.
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Low pressure system south of WA trying its luck against the massive high over the Bight. The associated cold front is triggering severe thunderstorms over south west WA. pic.twitter.com/ijWP3GF9Tg
— Andrew Miskelly (@andrewmiskelly) May 2, 2024
On the other side of the country, a cold front was crossing southern parts of Western Australia, with severe thunderstorms in areas mostly south of Perth. “There wasn’t very heavy rain with them,” Hines said, aside from 100mm of rain falling at Brookdale in Perth.
“By and large, aside from those generally minor flooding issues, that was welcomed rainfall on the back of what has been an incredibly dry start to the year for WA,” Hines said.
“Any rain they get in that part of the country at the moment is generally a good news story.”