Approaching low one for the records

A TROPICAL low hanging around just south of Papua New Guinea could bring Darwin up to the second wettest wet season ever this week.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Ben Price said the low is expected to track to the west over the next couple of days.

“From there there’s a bit of uncertainty as to what it’s going to do,” he said.

“It looks like it will intensify to some degree. As to where it moves, there is sort of a broad kind of disagreement between the models that we use as to whether it’s going to continue west or whether it’s going to take a bit more of a south westerly direction and move a bit closer to the NT coast.”

Darwin only needs 19mm to go up into that second place position, however, it’s highly unlikely to topple the top place as 500mm of rainfall would be needed. Mr Price said any possible rain would likely come mid-next week, and that the Bureau wasn’t ruling out a late April cyclone.

“The risk of a cyclone forming isn’t out of the question, though at this stage it seems very unlikely,” he said.

In Darwin, up to 20mm of rain is expected on Wednesday, while up to 25mm is forecast on Thursday. Today, a sunny day of 34C is forecast.