Slips, dips and ice: rain expected to get worse before it gets better
People queued for laundromat dryers, children sloshed through puddles and dogs dragged mud through their houses after a week of rain, but without relief: Sydney’s weather is going to get worse before it gets better.
A stubborn high-pressure system sitting over the Tasman Sea that is causing showers on the coast and inland ranges is predicted to coincide with a coastal trough to bring heavy rain to Sydney on Sunday and Monday.
The weather didn’t turn off swimmers at the Bondi Icebergs Winter Swimming Club’s opening day on Sunday.
The results are already playing out in the Illawarra, where the Point Perpendicular weather station received 137 millimetres of rain overnight in what is likely to be a May record. Other parts of the Illawarra coast recorded 60 to 80 millimetres overnight.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Edward Medlock said that rainfall was expected to move up the coast over the next two days.
“The Illawarra is generally worse because it sits close to the escarpment,” Medlock said.
“The easterly winds run up the escarpment and the rain comes. This afternoon Sydney is expected to see the worst of it.”
Competitors in the Runaway Sydney Half Marathon took off under grey skies and spectators endured drizzling rain to cheer them onwards.
Runner Johannes Motschmann took a tumble under the Sydney Harbour Bridge when he slipped in a puddle, but recovered quickly to win the 10-kilometre event in just under 32 minutes. He is used to puddles, having cut his teeth on the steeplechase.
In Campsie, LaunderMe Laundromat co-owner Kat Hwang was gearing up for another busy day, after people carrying baskets of wet washing queued for their turns on the drying machines on Saturday.
“Generally on the weekends we’re busier, but there has been much more of an influx,” Hwang said.
Good weather for ducks also meant good weather for swimmers at the Bondi Icebergs Winter Swimming Club, who celebrate their season launch by jumping into the famed ocean pool holding blocks of ice.
Club president Lynne Fitzsimmons was blase about the prospect of rain, which was torrential at last year’s event and entirely absent the year before.
“We’re in the pool rain, hail or shine,” Fitzsimmons said. “It’s the one thing we can’t control.”
Neither was she concerned that the rain might temper the experience of 75 swimmers visiting from their sister club in San Francisco.
There were big waves at Bondi Beach.
“They swim in water that is 15 degrees at the warmest, so it’s like a bath for them. They’re not affected by the weather at all,” she said.
Not counting for the blocks of ice, the sea temperature at Bondi Beach was measured at 21.5 degrees – around average for May.
The atmospheric conditions, however, are likely to remain unseasonably wet in Sydney for at least a week after the heavy rain passes, Medlock said.
Seal Rocks, north of Newcastle, is predicted to be lashed later in the week.
Swimmers jump in the pool with a block of ice to open the season at the Bondi Icebergs.
“The high-pressure system over the Tasman has been there for a long time, and it’s not looking like it’s moving very much,” Medlock said.
“Once this enhanced rainfall moves through, that high-pressure system is still there.”
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