Parts of South Australia, Victoria and southwestern NSW which have been desperately dry in recent months have enjoyed unseasonably heavy rainfall from Sunday afternoon into Monday morning, with Mildura in northwest Vic doing particularly well.

As a trough extending from northern Australia down into Victoria helped convert abundant atmospheric moisture into welcome rain, some of the rainfall totals of note to 9 am Monday included:

Image: Two-hour combined radar and satellite loop showing rain streaming across Victoria from the northwest from 7am to 9am Monday, November 25.

• 42mm at Mildura, which was the city’s heaviest daily fall in almost three years (since January 2022). It brings Mildura’s annual running rainfall tally to 211.5mm, which is getting within coo-ee of the annual average of 287.5mm – a mark that looked well out of reach after an eight-month streak earlier this year when no month topped 20mm.
• 36.2mm at Renmark in the SA Riverland forecast district, the heaviest daily fall in just over two years (since October 2022).
• 21.8mm at Leigh Creek, a small town in SA's North East Pastoral forecast district where the entire November average monthly rainfall is just 18.7mm. As with Renmark, this was the heaviest fall since October 2022.
• Falls between 30mm and 45mm at four locations in the arid far SW corner of New South Wales, including 39mm at Lake Victoria, the site's heaviest daily rainfall in any month in 11 years. 

Image: Observed rainfall at Mildura, Vic, in the 24 hours ending at 9am on November 25, 2024 on the Weatherzone app.

Falls are continuing in northern Vic and southwestern NSW through Monday, with Swan Hill recording exactly 10mm to midday on top of its 23.6mm to 9am.

While the current rainband is breaking up as it tracks in a southeasterly direction with heavy falls tending to drop off, there’s plenty more rain for Australia in the week ahead.

As Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino explained in his story about the big stormy end to spring, much of the country can expect rain and storms in the coming week or so. 

Image: Forecast accumulated rain for the week ending Sunday, December 1, 2024.

The parts of Victoria and SA that received the heaviest rain overnight will probably not see such significant totals repeated, but parts of eastern Victoria are in line for a good soaking, especially the high country (the purple patch in NE Vic in the above chart).

Meanwhile the overnight news was not so positive for Adelaide residents.

Despite parts of SA recording healthy falls, the SA capital again missed the rainfall action, continuing a frustrating run of systems that seem to bypass the city. All but two months of 2024 to date have now seen below-average rainfall in Adelaide.

Melbourne fared a little better with 5mm in the 24 hours to 9 am Monday, but it, too, continues a run of teasing weather where rain events have been frequent enough, but totals relatively light. Melbourne's monthly rainfall totals are running below average for four months in a row.

There is, however, positive news for Melburnians hoping for soggy skies, with a better-than-50% chance of rain in Melbourne for six of the next seven days. With luck, parks and gardens could receive the heavy downpours that these bursts of unstable late spring weather tend to produce.

Title mage: Banks of the Murray River at Mildura, population approx. 50,000. Source: iStock.