NSW, Queensland weather: Heavy rain, flooding for Northern NSW

Areas of NSW that are already flood affected are expecting further flooding this week, as Victoria stays mostly dry. See what is being predicted.

Rain is expected to continue throughout NSW and Queensland until Sunday, putting some communities that were flooded earlier this month month on high alert.

It comes after severe weather warnings were issued by the Bureau of Meteorology yesterday for heavy rainfall which was expected to lead to flash flooding across the NSW regions of the Northern Rivers, Mid North Coast and Northern Tablelands.

BOM forecasters were predicting six-hourly rainfall totals between 80mm to 140mm, reaching up to 300mm in some places.

BOM senior meteorologist Jonathan How said this unfortunately included communities that were impacted by the flooding earlier this month.

There were also minor to major flood warnings in place for coastal catchments extending from the Tweed to the Hawkesbury Nepean Valley.

Sydney’s Warragamba Dam was also predicted to spill yesterday — with its capacity at 99.9 per cent at time of print.

“With many catchments across NSW quite saturated any short duration rainfall does increase the risk of potential flash flooding over the coming days as well as landslides,” Mr How said.

“With the low pressure system sitting off the coast, we are likely to see showers for the remainder of the week.”

Meanwhile, NSW areas from the coast, west to Forbes and Nyngan and south to Cooma were expecting 5-50mm of rain.

Some of the largest falls in northern NSW on Monday included 262mm at Duranbah and 247mm at Murwillumbah, 258mm at Kingscliff and 166mm at Byron Bay.

The highest weekly rain total last week was 264.2mm at Port Macquarie.

Across Victoria in the past week it has been mostly dry, with some falls between 5mm and 37mm recorded in the upper north east and Gippsland.

And with the traditional start of sowing less than a month away, many cropping regions across Victoria are hoping for more rain.

However, many areas have had above average rain for the first 28 days of March, including 69.4mm at Albury, 16.2mm at Nhill, 68.8mm at Bendigo, 53mm at Wangaratta and 68.4mm at Omeo.