Rain to cover city before temperatures plummet mid-week
The wet start of the week is expected to last until mid-Tuesday, but night temperatures may drop after the nationwide cloud band lifts in the middle of the week.
Senior meteorologist Harry Clarke said weather in Brisbane would remain gloomy until Tuesday afternoon, with between 10 and 30 millimeters of rain expected in the city during that time.
“There are higher than expected falls, particularly towards the Gold Coast hinterland… it will reach 50, maybe even 100 millimeters tomorrow when this is said and done,” he said.
“This isn’t a torrential rain, it’s more moderate but it’s definitely the heaviest rain we’ve had in a while.”
The blanket cloud will also drop daytime temperatures into the low 20s, but Clarke said it would insulate Brisbane at night.
“Once this system clears Tuesday evening and Wednesday, we will have cooler, drier southwest winds behind us, so we will see a return to mostly sunny conditions,” Clarke said.
But he said overnight temperatures could drop into single digits.
A band of clouds forming over Brisbane on Monday, stretching from the Kimberly region in Western Australia to the southern NSW coast, was bringing rain to much of the south-east and parts of western Queensland.
He said “unseasonal” rainfall in western Queensland reached about 42 millimeters at Windorah, a rural area 1200 kilometers northwest of Brisbane that was hit by widespread flooding in the area in March.
Last week’s wet weather in Brisbane brought a total of 33 millimeters of rain, with nearly half of that falling on Friday (14.4 millimetres).
Fans who gathered for the Magic Round at the weekend were spared “mutual” showers, but the expected peak on Sunday did not materialize as the weather bureau recorded less than 1 millimeter of rainfall.
The last time the city recorded more than 14 millimeters of rainfall in a single day was in early March, when severe storms hit the region.
Clarke also warned beachgoers undeterred by the rain that heavy waves and large tides on the Sunshine and Gold Coast were creating challenging swimming conditions.
