Taking a look at our radar imagery from the last few hours, we can see fairly scattered showers along the coast between K'gari in Queensland, all the way down to the Illawarra in New South Wales, but we're also starting to see the showers ramping up across some of those inland areas, particularly across the North West Slopes and Plains of New South Wales.
Now, in the 24 hours to 9 o'clock this morning, we've seen a fairly widespread 10 to 30 mm across many of those areas, with some coastal locations seeing more, particularly through the Illawarra and about the coast north of the Sunshine Coast, where rainfall totals have pushed above 70 mm in that 24 hour period to 9 o'clock this morning.
But it's the period between now and Friday that is expected to be the wettest for many of these areas. Let's take a look at that now.
This moisture is being drawn in around this coastal trough you see here, with rain expected across the coast and those inland areas through the rest of today into tomorrow as well. Through tomorrow afternoon into tomorrow evening, we are going to see a gradual clearing across some of those inland parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland, but the rain is likely to persist along the coast.
As we go into Friday, we'll continue to see some of those more moderate rainfall totals along the coast through the early part of the day, but as we move into the afternoon and push towards Saturday, the system is going to pull away from the coast, leaving us with generally much drier weather for the weekend.
Taking a look at our rainfall totals from midnight last night out to midday on Friday, we can see just where that rain is currently expected to fall. Through the period between now and midday and Friday, we are expecting around 30 to 60 mm across that north-east, inland part of New South Wales and across the Darling Downs of Queensland. We could see isolated accumulations up to around 80 mm or so through those areas.
But the higher rainfall totals are likely to accumulate along the coast, as you see here with these more purple colours. In those areas, we are expecting a more widespread 60 to 120 mm, with isolated accumulations in excess of 150 mm. Now, some of those higher accumulations include places like Sydney all the way up to around the Gold Coast in Queensland.
While our day to day rainfall totals are not expected to be excessively high, these rainfall accumulations over the next 2 to 3 days are going to have an impact. And it's for that reason that we've issued widespread Flood Watches across New South Wales.
Now, the Flood Watches are a heads up that riverine flooding is expected to develop in these areas over the coming days. You can see the flood watches that are current as of 12 p.m. on Wednesday here. We've got them extending down the coast from north-east New South Wales, all the way down into the Hunter, pushing inland as well.
These red areas you see here flag the risk of potentially major flooding for the Gwydir River catchment and for the Namoi River catchment. It's worth noting that we already have Flood Warnings in place for the Namoi River catchment, and a Minor Flood Warning for the Barwon River. This is thanks to a previous rainfall event.
The soils are very wet through these areas and these rivers are likely to be quite responsive to this rain that's forecast over the coming days. As the rain continues to fall and we see our rivers start to respond, it is essential to stay on top of the latest forecasts and warnings via the Bureau's website, the BOM Weather app, and via social media.
Stay safe and we'll catch you next time.
Video current: 1:00 pm AEST Wednesday 20/08/25
