Parts of the Illawarra and NSW south coast had 180mm - over a month's rainfall - in the 12 hours to midday on June 6, 2024.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Further heavy rainfall on the way for New South Wales, including parts of the Sydney
00:04 area.
00:05 This is a severe weather warning update from the Bureau of Meteorology.
00:08 It is Thursday the 6th of June and let's dive into the observations, the ground truth.
00:12 This is what has happened in the last 12 hours.
00:15 It's the radar from midnight last night through until midday today.
00:18 And keep your eye on this stretch of coast here, south of Wollongong, the southern Illawarra
00:22 coast where it has been raining most if not all of that past 12 hours, and not just raining
00:26 but raining heavily.
00:27 When you see these yellows tending into orange areas on the radar, that is moderate to heavy
00:32 rain and that has piled in and brought 180mm plus in the past 24 hours there, which is
00:37 over a month's rainfall for some of these areas.
00:41 And through the rest of the day today we do expect this rain to slide a little bit northwards.
00:45 And it has just in the last couple of hours moved into Wollongong and it could continue
00:48 to move northwards into parts of Sydney over the next few hours as well and that is why
00:53 we have expanded the heavy rain warning area.
00:56 So this yellow area is the heavy rainfall warning, it covers all of the Illawarra district
01:00 as well as the far southern suburbs of Sydney as that rain is forecast to shift northwards
01:05 this afternoon.
01:06 Note we also see the warning cover parts of the central and southern tablelands of New
01:10 South Wales as heavy rain is also anticipated in some of those mountainous areas.
01:15 Let's take a little bit of a zoom out now and see how things are forecast to change
01:19 over the next few days.
01:20 Not a lot of change actually for the rest of Thursday.
01:22 The low which is driving this weather, driving this rain onto the country is not moving anywhere
01:27 quickly so we'll continue to see a lot more rain around Illawarra and Sydney and some
01:32 patchy showers all the way down to the south coast and into eastern Victoria and a band
01:37 of rain will also affect some central elevated areas.
01:40 But we will see a bigger shift tomorrow on Friday.
01:43 Initially the low moves towards the coast but then it does a U-turn in the morning and
01:46 starts to move away from the country, meaning in the second half of the day on Friday that
01:50 rain will really begin to clear out with brighter weather starting to work its way into New
01:55 South Wales for Friday afternoon and evening and we'll continue to see that trend on Saturday.
02:00 This low will waver in the Tasman a little bit but generally is forecast to move more
02:04 to the southeast further away from the country and we'll continue to see that clearing trend
02:09 to conditions and bright weather on the way for many for Saturday and Sunday.
02:13 Although it will be these places along the coast which are the absolute last spots to
02:17 have that rain clear away.
02:20 The total rainfall across the next few days, this is between now and Saturday, all the
02:24 rain that we're expecting over that time.
02:26 Well when we're getting into the reds we're looking at triple figures, 100mm or so through
02:29 large parts of the Illawarra, coastal parts of the south coast could get 100mm too and
02:34 it's a little hard to see but southern parts of Sydney could also be up over 100.
02:38 Now we do expect isolated areas throughout the whole event could be over 200mm, potentially
02:43 up towards 250, particularly about the Illawarra.
02:48 With that heavy rainfall, there is likely to be some rises to river levels in the area.
02:52 These are all flood watches for major rivers around Sydney and around the Illawarra including
02:58 this moderate flood watch, the big orange area through the middle for the Hawkesbury
03:02 Nepean River near Sydney, a major waterway there, with a few other moderate flood watches,
03:06 meaning moderate flooding is possible if the rainfall comes through as expected.
03:11 So do keep your eye on these flood watches because once we start to see those river levels
03:15 climbing they may well turn into flood warnings.
03:18 Stay up to date with the flood and the severe weather information at the Bureau website
03:22 and on the app and we'll keep those updates rolling on social media too.
03:26 [Music plays]