Australia Still Wet but in Different Places. Drier this week.

Fig. 1: Rainfall amount for Australia last week and the daily soil moisture anomalies.

Summary: During November 2022, the wet monsoon arrived early and soaked Northern Australia (Fig. 1). The focus of a wet climate across the North subtracted wet risk from the central East Coast where a surprisingly dry regime was observed. The other excessive rainfall location was across the Interior Southeast and across Victoria to Tasmania. During the past week, Coastal Queensland turned wetter (Fig. 2). The NOAA/CPC daily soil moisture anomalies identify an expanding wet signature most notably across Northwest and Southeast Australia (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2-3: Rainfall amount for Australia last week and the NOAA/CPC daily soil moisture anomalies.

The outlook is much drier over the next 7 days with only the coastal southwestern continent receiving significant rain (Fig. 4). The week ahead is also substantially warmer than normal. In the 8-14-day period, a cold front brings much cooler air to the southern half of Australia with some attendant rainfall (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4-5: ECM ENS percent of normal rainfall forecast for the 1-7-day and 8-14-day periods.