The New South Wales coast is set for a drenching with up to 10 days of rain and possible flooding on the cards as a high pressure system moving over Australia’s south-east crosses paths with an inland low.
Over the coming week 100-150mm of rain could fall on the central and northern NSW coastline, while 60-80mm was expected over western NSW.
Rain and thunderstorms were expected to stretch from north-west NSW through the central coastline on Tuesday afternoon, according to WeatherZone, which was forecasting up to 10 days of rainfall in some areas of the state.
Christie Johnson, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said a large high pressure system sitting south of the Great Australian Bight would be pulled over Tasmania, Victoria, NSW and Queensland this week, bringing showers to the coast of the south-eastern states.
From Thursday, a low pressure system was also expected to develop and travel across inland NSW, interacting with a surface trough to bring showers and possible thunderstorms.
It would move towards the east coast on Friday, crossing over with those coastal showers, where the most rainfall was expected. Western and central NSW, and southern Queensland, were also expected to see up to two days of rain.
“That is when we could see some particularly heavy rainfall along the eastern part of NSW,” Johnson said. “It will be wet over the weekend.”
Coastal NSW expecting 100-150mm or more of rain in the next week or so. (Source: @bom_au) pic.twitter.com/6ikjWUwZaT
— @phannam@mastodon.green (@p_hannam) April 30, 2024
Potential flooding was “not out of the question”, depending on how much rain falls and where, particularly around saturated river catchments, Johnson said. “If we do get heavier rainfall, we would expect river rises.”
“Flooding is a risk in NSW over the weekend, especially because the heavy rainfall will be falling over a sodden landscape with rainfall expected each day in the lead up to the weekend,” according to the WeatherZone news release.
Wet weather may continue into the middle of next week, “so it is a very wet period,” Johnson said.
