Saturday weather and flood watch – what we can expect today…

Welcome to a somewhat dull Saturday, which weather and flood-wise is a watch-and-wait-and-see kind of a day, at least so far.

The short story is – rain continues to fall, and importantly it’s falling over the Warragamba Dam catchment area as well as here in the Hawkesbury.

Warragamba Dam is currently at 97%, which is Friday’s recorded level, they haven’t updated it yet today so we’ll keep an eye on that.

The river levels at both Windsor and North Richmond are not threatening to rise and close the bridges today, though a Flood Watch remains for Macdonald, Colo and Hawkesbury rivers in our region.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued its latest Severe Weather Warning at 4.50am this morning, with little change from their warning bulletins yesterday. “Six-hourly rainfall totals between 80 to 150mm are possible,” they say.

But moving into this coming week, they say the rain could be prolonged.

Latest severe weather map from BOM

“There is the potential for an East Coast Low to develop overnight Sunday or early Monday off the coast, which would prolong this heavy rainfall event into early next week, with consecutive days of heavy rainfall possible. If an East Coast Low does form, damaging wind gusts may become a risk late on Sunday and into next week, depending on the strength and location of the low,” says BOM.

The BOM’s latest Flood Watch is Number 3 and was issued on Friday at 12.16pm, and again no change from yesterday when they warned there could be potential major flooding in the Hawkesbury Nepean Valley over the weekend.

The next BOM update will be around 2pm, so we’ll see what they’re saying then and of course we will keep you all informed throughout the day as we hear anything new.

Main picture by Aline Nadai

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