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Rain drenching Vic after driest Melbourne September on record

It’s set to be a huge few days of wild spring weather across southeastern Australia, and Victoria is already copping it this Tuesday morning.

After Melbourne registered its driest September in 168 years of records with just 10.8 mm of rain, an extremely active loop of rain and storms sweeping across the state in a southeasterly direction from the northwest.

Rain drenching Vic after driest Melbourne September on record

The large blobs of precipitation on the radar have already delivered 8.4 mm of rain to Melbourne in the period from 8:30 am to 11:00 am Tuesday, with the prospect of more solid falls in further bands of moisture throughout the day.

As you can see on the map below, several locations through western and northern parts of Victoria saw falls within the 10-30 mm range or even slightly higher overnight.

Mostly these weren’t huge falls, but they were highly significant in the context of the recent extremely dry trend. To cite just one example:

  • Warracknabeal Airport, in western Victoria’s Wimmera region, received 12 mm of rain to 9 am, which just happens to be exactly its total rainfall for September this year!

The one piece of not-such-great-news with Tuesday morning’s Victorian rain is that virtually none has yet reached Gippsland, where unseasonably early bushfires are burning but the ranges east of Melbourne are to a large extent blocking the northwesterly moisture flow from reaching further east.

That will change from Tuesday evening onwards with heavy rain likely on Wednesday as a cold front arrives and winds swing to a more southerly aspect.

Parts of eastern Victoria could literally see severe fires and flooding rains within as little as 24 hours. We’ll keep you posted, and please keep checking our warnings page or our app.

 

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