Australia Weather News

Much of Australia is being drenched by rain or thunderstorms this weekend thanks to a rare southern intrusion of very moist equatorial air.

The tropical air mass has already generated the worst floods in decades across outback Queensland and will track east this weekend, dragging heavy rain and storms across New South Wales and south-east Queensland.

In the meantime, a tropical low soaking the Kimberley this weekend will then traverse the interior and lead to another round of widespread rain across central and eastern Australia next week.

The ongoing soaking across our interior will bring the desert to life over the coming months and will lead to at least a partial filling of Australia's largest lake — Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.

Saturday soaking for Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra

The combination of equatorial moisture and a subtropical low-pressure system can result in only one outcome: widespread heavy rain.

The system has been notable for its intensity and immobility across western Queensland, dumping more than a years' worth of rain on parts of the Channel Country in less than a week.

While the heaviest falls are near the centre of the system, a band of showers and thunderstorms extends well north and south, stretching more than 2,000 kilometres from the Gulf of Carpentaria to near the Victorian border.

Thankfully, the rain across far-west Queensland finally eased on Friday as the low commenced a trajectory towards the east coast — triggering flood watches for dozens of rivers across northern NSW and south-east Queensland.

The low's path south-east also caused the heaviest rain to shift across the border, dropping well over a months' worth of rain over north-west NSW on Friday, including more than 50 millimetres in Bourke.

As the low tracks towards the Tasman Sea today, heavy falls are possible from central Queensland to the NSW South Coast, including around Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra, where 24-hour totals could exceed 50mm.

The tropical humidity is also conducive for severe thunderstorms and flash flooding.

According to the Bureau Of Meteorology (BOM) thunderstorm forecast along with their high-resolution modelling, there is even the risk of very intense rain in the higher-demographic regions of the Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, which could warrant an emergency weather alert.

Thankfully though for the eastern seaboard, the now mobile low should track off the NSW coast overnight, preventing a repeat of the multi-day deluge which has devastated western Queensland.

Sunday flood risk for South Coast

As the low tracks east, the bulk of the rainband will clear by Sunday, however the system may briefly stall and intensify just off the NSW coast due to interaction with a warm Tasman Sea.

This scenario would cause the rainband to wrap back towards land on Sunday, leading to over 100mm and possibly flooding along the NSW southern coast and across east Gippsland.

The deepening low will also strengthen winds, and damaging gusts can't be ruled out on Sunday from about the Illawarra to the Victorian border, along with a sharp rise in seas and swells.

After soaking the nation for 10 days, the low should finally move away from the east coast by Wednesday — but there's more rain ahead.

Tropical low to bring second round of rain

A somewhat surprising tropical low was developing off the Kimberley coast on Friday, unexpected in the sense it was not predicted by modelling earlier in the week.

While it's now moving inland and weakening, the system will be responsible for dragging another mass of very moist air into Australia's interior.

This next major rain event will initially cause hundreds of millimetres and flooding over parts of the Kimberley this weekend, ahead of a track into the interior through Monday and Tuesday.

Unfortunately for flood-affected communities in Queensland and NSW, the remnants of the system should then bring widespread rain through the middle of next week.

Although this second bout of rain will pale in comparison to this week's storm, widespread falls of 20 to possibly 50mm will still hamper the clean-up and add to downstream peaks.

All-time rain records annihilated

This week's rain has been astonishing, but let's let the numbers do the talking.

With hundreds of millimetres falling across roughly half of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre's catchment, a major filling event will occur during the coming months.

The last time water arrived in Australia's largest lake was relatively recently in 2024, but the high temperatures and evaporation across northern South Australia ensure inflows quickly evaporate and the lake has been dry since spring.

It normally takes a couple of months for floodwaters to reach the lake from Queensland, however, lighter flows in north-east SA following rain last weekend could arrive within weeks, well ahead of the main flood peaks.