The wettest place in Australia in the 24 hours to 9 am Monday was a location that doesn't often top that list at any time of year, and especially in early autumn.

It was not a town that received heavy coastal rain or a wet season tropical downpour, but the town of Temora (population 6,000)  in the NSW Central West Slopes and Plains forecast district.

• Temora received 113 mm overnight, most of whch fell in a four-hour burst from 1:30 am to 5:30 am
• The town's average March rainfall is 40.4 mm and its annual average rainfall is 523.5 mm
• So Temora received almost triple its average monthly rainfall, and more than a fifth of its annual average rainfall overnight
• It was just the sixth time that Temora has recorded 100 mm or more in a day in records dating back to 1934, and the town's wettest March day in 41 years.

The cause of the deluge was a near stationary thunderstorm which formed due to an upper trough moving in from the northwest.

You can see the storm pretty much parked over the Temora region on the loop below, which shows the three-hour prefiod until 4:30 am (Temora is located roughly halfway between Young and Narrandera).

Nearby towns also received heavy rainfall, with 76 mm at Australia's "cherry capital" of Young.

As we swing into Monday afternoon, heavy rain is persisting in parts of central NSW as the trough remains over the centre of the state.

• Condobolin, about two hours north of Temora, saw 21.4 mm to 11 am, after 34.8 mm overnight.
• Reasonably heavy falls have also occurred on the NSW Mid North Coast, with 102.8 mm overnight at Taree, and another 19.4 mm on Monday morning.

But Taree's monthly average for March is almost 200 mm, so that kind of deluge is not unusual for this time of year. The falls in drier districts of inland NSW are much more rare, and will likely be appreciated by locals in a region which has been rapidly drying out of late as La Niña has waned.

Indeed, this was just Temora's second rain day in March 2023 to date, after a totally rainless February.

A return to hot, dry weather lies ahead for inland NSW later this week.