The drought in some parts of New Zealand has been even worse than it is here. They've even had a few problems with bushfires this summer from what I've heard. Over towards the west coast of the South Island, a place could Wanaka (funny name I know), has a forecast very similar to Melbourne's for temps over the next 8 days, 25C, 26C, 28C, 30C, 31C, 30C, 29C, 28C. Pretty impressive for a place at 44 degrees latitude that averages just under 24C for Feb maximums. It's all linked to the same pattern that is causing our heat and dry, i.e. stubborn upper high ridge.
Anyway, excited about 1mm from all that last night.
I count that as a very big miss for here as almost everywhere around me here got between 10mm and 20mm and 38mm in Sunbury, plus there was almost constant lightning thunder and black sky to the near west for several hours last night. I almost forgot how frustrating storms can be.
We've only picked up one storm from the entire sequence of storm days here. Luckily we got just under 17mm from that one. We would still be very, very dry if we hadn't.
No end in sight to the heatwave according to the models although instability really steps up next Monday-Wednesday and there absolutely should be widespread storms tending to rain at night. If we miss out on that then everyone has the right to go nuts, lol. I bet that a lot us still do though.