Ah, Sydney. Looks like we just can’t catch a break. Over the first week of July, Sydney is set to be saturated in a month’s worth of rain over just five days, with the city forecast to get soaked with 50 millimetres of rain every day from Monday to Friday. Hooray!
The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted a massive wet spell until at least Wednesday, with heavy rain meant to fall across the east coast of NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory this weekend, with it all due to a deepening low-pressure system that has just swooped in – ending our fleeting moment of a dry early winter with extremely heavy rain that is going to be joined by gale-force winds, both of which are believed to bolster the possibility of severe weather warnings this weekend.
The bulk of the rain is forecast to fall on NSW’s South and Central Coasts, with the modelling over at Weatherzone predicting that these areas may receive over 100 millimetres of rain in the space of 24 hours. As such, if you’re planning on heading this way for the school holidays, or just some nice July travel this week, the bureau has advised that you remain sharply aware of potential flooding risks and river rises, with anything possible given the extremity of conditions.
La Niña was declared dead on June 21 (that was the Bureau of Meteorology's call, not ours) but sadly, they also warned that the La Niña pattern has a nifty 50 per cent chance of happening again, for the third time later this year, a fact that is due to a weather phenomenon called ‘ENSO’– the El Nino Southern Oscillation Outlook.
According to the weather gods over at the bureau, most models indicate that a neutral ENSO situation will be the MO during winter in the Southern Hemisphere. However, right now, four out of the seven models are indicating that La Niña may come back to greet us this spring.
Until then Sydney, all we can do is cross our fingers, wait – and then make sure we get stuck into the many, incredibly stellar things to do inside while it's pouring.
So honestly, don't despair too much. There's truly so much fun stuff you can do.