It looks pretty dramatic on the satellite pic, but don't be fooled. This cloudband stretching from NW Western Australia all the way to Tasman Sea is delivering no more than a few drops of rain here and there.

Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino wrote a quick, easy explainer on northwest cloudbands in June this year, and told you that they're like a "sash" stretching across the country. Our mets really can be quite poetic sometimes!

But while northwest cloudbands can tend to look similar, they are not born equal.

Their effect on the most populated corner of the country in SE Australia all depends how much moisture they’re ferrying across the country from the warm waters of the Indian Ocean up towards Christmas Island. 

Often they're like huge, soggy sky sponges waiting to be squeezed out. This week? Not so much.

This particular cloudband is now disconnected from the Indian Ocean, so it hasn't brought much moisture with it.

As we told you yesterday, it's extremely hot and dry in NW Western Australia this week, which is another factor reducing the rainfall potential of this particular cloudband, as the jetstream carries it southeast.

As you can see from the green radar blobs on the image above (taken around 3 pm this afternoon), parts of Victoria and South Australia have received a little rain with this system, but nothing too significant, with most readings less than 5 mm at most locations.

In general terms, most of Australia has been dry this week compared to the soggy conditions of recent times, and this cloudband hasn't done too much to change that.

We'll have a story on our site first thing tomorrow asking how long we can expect the sunshine to last in this La Niña summer.