EASTERN Australia's big wet shows no signs of abating, with the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issuing its winter climate update with an extremely strong forecast for above average rain for nearly all the eastern third of the country.
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In its Winter 2022 Climate Outlook the BOM said there was an above 80 per cent chance of higher than average rainfall through virtually all of inland NSW, Queensland and northern Victoria.
The very slowly decaying La Nina event was cited as the major driver of the likely higher than average falls.
And not only are the chances for above normal averages, the BOM has gone further and said inland parts of New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory are likely to be in the top 20 per cent of wettest winters on record, although with northern Australia's dry season starting in May, it only takes a small amount of extra rain to be above average through winter.
However, further south, the forecast heightens the flood risk
With already saturated catchments in south-eastern Australia, the winter rain could see further flooding.
Through inland areas the flood waters in low lying areas in Queensland and New South Wales will slowly move inland towards South Australia over coming months, either through the Murray Darling system or the systems that fill central Australia's ephemeral lakes.
Along with the La Nina, the BOM said the developing Indian Ocean Dipole negative event was correlated with above average rainfall.
However, it is a different story on the west coast, especially in WA's agricultural heartland in the south-west of the state.
Areas immediately to the north of Perth have as little as a 25pc chance of exceeding the median rainfall, while nearly all of the state's cropping belt, with exceptions of areas around Esperance, has below 40pc chance of exceeding median falls.
However, critically, looking out to the July to September period the forecast returns to much more neutral levels for WA, while the likelihood of wet conditions intensifies further.
The entire Murray-Darling Basin is rated an 80pc chance, the highest level provided by BOM of exceeding the July-September median rainfall.