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Sydney commuters get saturated en route to work

Guy Dixon, Friday February 27, 2015 - 11:59 AEDT

After a very dry start to February, parts of Sydney finally received some decent rain. Unfortunately, the monthly total still remains well below quota.

As of Thursday 26th, Sydney Observatory hill had recorded just 32mm, a vast 86mm below the average for February.

From about 7am this morning however, a moist southeasterly flow pushed over the Sydney Basin delivering some healthy showers to push that total up.

Sydney Observatory Hill received 26.8mm to 9am which made it the heaviest daily total for February since 2013, however for parts of the Basin, the rainfall continued to fall after the 9am cut-off. Sydney Olympic park managed to collect a further 6.4mm after 9am, while Terrey Hills also collected another 3.6mm.

During the peak hour commute to work, the showers became particularly heavy. The rain gauge at Sydney Observatory Hill collected 8.6mm in 10 minutes at about 8am, another 5.4mm at 8:20am and another 6.2mm in 10 minutes just before 9am.

These rapid deluges led to some minor flash flooding which slowed the traffic to a crawl.

Unfortunately, most Sydney locations are still falling short of their February quotas. Sydney Observatory Hill remains 59mm short of the February average while the Airport sits more than 68mm below average.

Bankstown Airport needs 66.2mm to reach average by the end of the month which sounds ambitious with only a few patchy and insignificant showers on the forecast.

In terms of seasonal averages however, the summer as a whole has actually seen above average rain. Despite the dry February, December and January made up for it with 118mm and 165.8mm respectively (152% of December average and 163.9% of January average).

- Weatherzone

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