ANOTHER round of rain and thunderstorms will sweep across NSW during the next few days, helping some parts of the state on their continuing recovery from drought.
An upper-level trough interacting with a stream of moisture-laden air from the tropics will cause rain and storms to spread across NSW from west to east on Friday and Saturday.
A few lighter showers will linger in some areas on Sunday.
The heaviest rain during the next few days is likely to fall across parts of the northern inland.
It's expected some places could pick up more than 20 millimetres of rain.
Unfortunately, some areas will miss out this time around, particularly in the south west of the state.
This week's wet weather is the latest in a series of rain-bearing systems that have been helping NSW edge its way out of drought in recent months.
At the beginning of winter, 90.8 per cent of NSW was in one of three drought categories according to the NSW Department of Primary Industries.
It's encouraging to note that by the end of June, this figure had dropped slightly to 86.9 per cent.
After a good month of rainfall in central and eastern NSW during July, only 78.5 per cent of the state was still in one of three drought categories at the beginning of August.
Preliminary figures from the opening nine days of this month suggest that the total area of NSW still in one of three drought categories has dropped further to around 65 per cent.
This winter and this year are shaping up to be more useful than last year in terms of rainfall for much of NSW.
In 2019, the state registered its fourth driest winter on record in the middle of its driest year on record.
In 2020, some parts of NSW have already exceeded their annual average rain for the year.
Forbes Airport's running annual total up to the middle of this week was 529.8mm.
This is more than double its annual total of 236mm from 2019 and around 50mm more than the site usually receives in an entire year.
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