Bureau of Meteorology reflects on 2022 record rainfall

Record rainfalls seen in the southeast quadrant of the Australian mainland, eastern Tasmania, the Kimberley and Cape York have performed well in the soil moisture measurement.

Bureau Hydrology specialist David Wilson said stream flow also broke records last year.

"As a whole, stream flows were above average to highest on record across much of Australia compared to all years since 1975," Dr Wilson said.

About 35 per cent of the stream flow sites achieved record levels, while 75pc of those sites recorded above average.

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In 2022, February and March had a concentrated amount of steam flows, while the latter part of the year also brought high soil moisture and stream flows due to the high amounts of rain and floods in eastern Australia.

"We had several slow moving low pressure systems, we had troughs, cold fronts, we have vast amounts of rainfall, which also led to the wettest spring on record in the southeast," Dr Wilson said.

This also translated to Australia having a 6pc higher water storage than they had at the same time last year.

"In the Murray Darling Basin, where most of our food comes from in Australia, we only have to go back to January 2020... to find water restrictions in place all through the northern Murray Darling Basin," Dr Wilson said.

"All the northern regulated valleys and areas around the Darling had stage three severe or stage four critical drought, and flows were at record low levels.

"But then after wet years in 2020 and 2021 and above average summer rainfall, many major storages in the north of the Murray Darling Basin were close to full by April of 2022, and further periods of very much above average rainfall continued across the basin for the second half of the year.

He said it had meant the conditions at the end of 2022 that most storages were "100pc full across the basin".

But Dr Wilson said parts of western Tasmania and southwest Western Australia experienced below-average stream flows, and it was essential to keep an eye on those areas in the future year.

Bureau senior climate risk specialist Stephanie Jacobs said that those areas, along with the Barkly and Victoria Daly regions in Northern Territory, experience either below-average or very below-average rainfall.

"It's worth noting that from February to April in 2022, rainfall was in the lowest 10pc of historical records for parts of the Northern Territory and Tasmania," she said.

Dr Jacobs also provided a long-range forecast for the year ahead and said climate models showed that it is unlikely La Nina will occur for a fourth successive time in 2023.

The country will be significantly drier across the country throughout autumn, with it continuing to be dry and warm up until the end of June.

"We're expecting drier than median conditions for April to June across most of the country," she said.

"We're also expecting warmer than normal days across most of the country except in the tropics, and warmer nights around the southern coastal regions and Tasmania, but cooler than normal nights in Central Australia and Northwest WA."