Weather News

Monsoon trough pounds NT and WA

Drew Casper-Richardson, Sunday January 28, 2018 - 14:46 AEDT

A very active monsoon trough has continued to bring heavy rain, storms, gusty winds and damaging surf to parts of the Top End and the Kimberley.

A low pressure system over the Kimberley embedded within the monsoon trough has been driving heavy rain and storms over the Top End with western parts feeling the full force of the wild weather.

To 9am Sunday there were widespread falls of 50-100mm with many locations exceeding 100mm. Humpty Doo picked up a whopping 286mm, Middle Point recorded 214mm and The Chase had 203mm reach the gauge. The rain was extremely heavy at times leading to flash flooding in some areas. Noonamah had 13mm fall in just 10 minutes with a one-day total of 228mm - making it 347mm in the 48 hours to 9am Sunday.

Darwin recorded 136mm in the 24 hours to 9am Sunday taking their three day total to 285mm. Rain hasn't been the only feature of this system with winds gusting to 60-70km/h as storms moved through. Darwin had a peak gust of 61km/h on Sunday morning. The persistent cloud cover also kept a lid on daytime temperatures. Darwin only reached 27.2 degrees which is 4.6 below the average and the coldest January day since 2015.

Heavy rain also impacted the Kimberley with Mount Krauss picking up 185mm, Sturt Creek 153mm and Margaret Gorge 129mm. Winds gusted to 80-90km/h on some of the islands off the Kimberley coast, while Browse Island had a gust of 94km/h.

These conditions will continue on Monday as the low over the Kimberley deepens further. Falls in excess of 100mm are expected again in a similar area and strong, gusty potentially damaging winds will continue.

Severe Weather Warning are in place for parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Keep up to date with the latest warnings: http://www.weatherzone.com.au/warnings.jsp

- Weatherzone

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