Weather News

Storms bring heavy rain and hail to NSW

Monday was the seventh day in a row of severe thunderstorms over the New South Wales ranges and coast, dumping heavy rain and hail.

The most recent round of storms brought hail to the Blue Mountains and also at Mt Seaview and Forster/Tuncurry on the Mid North Coast. The hail in Forster Tuncurry was reported to be the size of 20 cent pieces, large enough to cause damage. In areas where the hail-size wasn't particularly large, the amount of hail was still substantial enough to cause roofs to collapse under the weight.

Mt Seaview ended up with 32mm of rain on Monday, on top of the 36mm, 20mm and 43mm in each of the previous three days, almost all coming from storms. In fact, during the past seven days, Mt Seaview has picked up 268mm, more than its monthly average of 241mm. All up this month it has accumulated 520mm withrain falling on 13 of the 14 days.

It has been quite a wet summer for Mt Seaview, gaining 1413mm so far, more than double the seasonal average of 675mm. This makes it the wettest summer in more than 50 years of records, beating the previous record of 1361mm, set in the summer of 2007/2008.

Monday's storms brought brief heavy downpours to the Northern Rivers, western Sydney, the Illawarra and the Southern Tablelands. Cooma on the southern Tablelands had its heaviest rain in more than three weeks, gaining 40mm.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week look like a quieter days in regard to storms. Some storms will form about the ranges each day but they are likely to be shorter-lived and be less intense due to the lingering trough in the area weakening. Many places including Sydney are likely to miss out on storms until at least Friday.

From Friday to next Tuesday another trough will move in from the west of the state, which will increase the thunderstorm potential on the slopes, ranges and coast. This is the period when severe thunderstorms become most likely again. Flash flooding is on the cards and later in the period damaging winds and hail become more of a chance.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2012

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