Blue Mountains weather: Did we break rainfall records?
It felt like the sky was falling down as heavy rains bucketed across the Blue Mountains, and now a climatologist has weighed in.
The Blue Mountains News
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At least one rainfall record was broken in the heavy storms that pummeled the Blue Mountains on the weekend, according to a climatologist.
Agata Imielska, a senior climatologist at the NSW Bureau of Meteorology, crunched the numbers for The Blue Mountains News and found a new rainfall record has been set in Springwood — and Katoomba came very close to breaking a record, too.
Ms Imielska said the Valley Heights station measured 474 mm of rain in Springwood in the four days to February 10.
“The previous four-day February record was 433.3mm in 1956, with 466.6 mm recorded in November 1961,” Ms Imielska told The News.
She said February 1986 was also “exceptionally wet”, with 439 mm falling in just three days.
The Farnells Rd weather station in Katoomba measured 517.4 mm of rain in the four days to February 10, Ms Imielska said.
“The highest four-day total on record for the station is 544.8 mm in August 1986, while the previous February record was 430.3mm recorded in February 1929,” she said.
The Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury State Emergency Service (SES) units has responded to nearly 399 call-outs in the region since Wednesday as the mop up after the weekend rains gets underway.
Limited buses are replacing trains between Lawson and Lithgow/Bathurst due to a landslide at Leura on Sunday.