Weather News

Dry start to the dry season in Perth

Ben Domensino, Tuesday January 15, 2019 - 14:33 AEDT

Perth has experienced an unusually dry spell of weather during the last two and a half months, its driest such period in 46 years.

The city only collected 3.2mm of rain during November and 1.8mm in December. This arid end to 2018 has been followed up by a paltry 1.8mm of rain during the first 15 days of January, as of 9am on Tuesday.

Perth's 6.8mm of rain between the start of November and the middle of January is the city's lowest accumulated total for this two-and-a-half month period since 1972/73, when just 4.6mm reached the gauge.

Summer is typically Perth's driest time of year, when rain-bearing cold fronts contract to the south and high pressure systems take up residence over Australia's southern latitudes. Recently, the highs over Western Australia's southern districts have been stronger than usual, further restricting the waning seasonal rainfall.

Perth is not expected to see any rain for the remainder of this week and could continue its dry run well into next week.

Despite the lack of recent rain, healthy falls earlier in 2018 boosted the Perth's water supply and the city's overall storage level is currently sitting at 11 per cent higher than this time last year.

- Weatherzone

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Rainfall to soak some parched areas of WA

13:00 AEST Rain could finally fall over parts of southwestern WA over the next week, wetting areas that have barely seen any rain for months. This rainfall will be caused by a low pressure trough extending from the Kimberley down to southwestern WA from late Thursday, with a low pressure system developing within it early to mid-next week. The images below shows that widespread rainfall of between 15 to 30mm is forecast in the week across western and southern WA, with isolated falls of between 40 to 60mm in the Gascoyne and Goldfields districts. Image: Accumulated rainfall to 8pm AWST on Thursday, May 2, according to Access (top) and ECMWF (bottom) You can see there is still some uncertainty about where and how much rainfall will fall in these areas late this week and early next week, with one model placing rain over Perth and the other predicting it will completely miss the city altogether. The heaviest rainfall days are likely to be Friday and mid next week when the low pressure system develops.