The clouds finally parted in Sydney on Sunday as the city enjoyed its sunniest day in more than three weeks. Unfortunately, this return of sunshine in the Harbour City will be short-lived.

Sydney just had its wettest March on record and its wettest calendar month in more than 30 years. It was also a gloomy month, with Sydney Airport averaging just 4 hours and 10 minutes of sunshine per day, 2 hours fewer than normal, and its cloudiest March in at least 44 years.

The combination of La Niña, an abnormally warm Tasman Sea, and a predominantly positive Southern Annular Mode (SAM) teamed up to cause last month's prolific rain and cloud in Sydney.

While this cloud and rain spilled into the opening days of April, the winds finally shifted to the west on the weekend, alllowing dry and sunny weather to return to Sydney and surrounding areas of NSW.

This sunny weather will continue on Monday and Tuesday as offshore winds persit for another couple of days. However, darker skies and more rain are expected to return mid-week.

Persistent onshore winds feeding into an upper-level trough will cause several days of cloudy weather and frequent rain from Wednesday.

Rain and cloud are forecast each day in Sydney until at least Sunday. While there is some model uncertainty regarding how much rain will fall, the maps below show that around 50 to 150mm could fall over parts of eastern NSW this week.

Image: Forecast accumulated rain between Monday, April 4 to Sunday April 10, according to the ECMWF (left), GFS (middle) and ACCESS-G (right) models.

Some of this week's rain will affect areas of eastern Australia that were impacted by flooding in recent weeks. This new rain falling onto already saturated catchments is likely to cause renewed river level rises in some areas. 

Be sure to check the latest forecasts and flood warnings in your area throughout the week if you live in eastern Australia.