Weather News

Dry season downpour in the Tiwis

Joel Pippard, Monday August 13, 2018 - 15:18 AEST

A moisture-laden trough on Sunday night has produced a rare dry-season downpour over the Tiwi Islands.

At Pirlangimpi on Melville Island (about 120km north-northwest of Darwin), 22.2mm of rain was recorded in the gauge on Sunday night as the trough generated a stream of showers passing overhead.

Despite the showers only lasting only two hours, this rain was the heaviest August daily rainfall in 30 years for the site.

Rainfall this heavy has only occurred five times in August in the last 55 years of records at Pirlangimpi. The highest 24 hour total fell in 1977 at 46.7mm.

The only other official weather station in the Tiwi Islands, Point Fawcett on Bathurst Island (60km to the southwest) failed to record any precipitation as the showers thinned out before they arrived.

Pirlangimpi's average August rainfall is only 6.1mm coming from an average of one-and-a-half rain days a month. This month is already sitting at 25.2mm, falling over four rain days, the wettest August since 1988.

The dry season typically runs from the start of May until the end of October. During this time rainfall is extremely rare, and it is not unusual to see months that record no rainfall at all.

Another, albeit significantly weaker, trough will arrive around Wednesday morning over coastal parts of the Northern Territory, possibly producing a few more showers.

- Weatherzone

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