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Sydneysiders's Dry July

Max Gonzalez, Wednesday July 23, 2014 - 12:24 AEST

While many Australians continue to raise money for cancer institutions through Dry July, it seems the Harbour city has joined in the efforts enduring one of its driest July on record.

If the month was to end tomorrow, the city would have suffered its fourth driest July in over 150 years worth or records and its driest since 1970.

So far, July 2014 has seen four millimetres of rain in the city, spread over five rainy days. This is only four percent of the 98mm which the city is used to seeing during an average July, which usually spans throughout 11 days.

While Sydney has been dry, parts of southeastern Australia have been graced with good falls this month. Even the Snowy Mountains and Victoria's High Country has seen up to about 160cm of snow after a poor start to the snow season.

The healthy falls across southern NSW and large parts of VIC have been influenced by a negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). During a negative IOD, warm waters off the northwest coast of Australia promote northwest cloudbands, which bring well deserved rainfall to thirsty areas west of the Great Divide.

While northwest cloud bands can carry moisture deep into the nation's southeast, these systems tend to drop most of the rainfall on or west of the ranges, not leaving much to the lee side of the divide. This has been the case recently and is why Sydney has seen little rainfall for the month.

For today, isolated showers will dampen parts of the NSW coast, mainly north of Sydney. However, these passing showers are only likely to grant a few millimetres at most.

A broad area of low pressure will then cross the state later this week, bringing areas of rain. This rain event, however, is likely to be short-live with only 2-8mm reaching the Sydney basin.

A high pressure system in its wake, will then keep any significant rain bearing systems at bay until at least the end of the month.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2014

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