Heavy rain continues to fall in the Murray-Darling Basin after some of the biggest 24-hour and 48-hour rainfall totals in years in parts of South Australia, northern and western Victoria, and far western News South Wales – some of which were record-breaking.

Notable rainfall totals in the 24 hours to 9am Monday included:

103.2mm at Mount Woowoolarah – a western NSW cattle station just a few kilometres from the SA border. It is very unusual for the highest NSW rainfall reading to occur in a location so far west.

100.6mm at Arcoona Bluff in South Australia’s North East Pastoral district. That’s also a huge fall for that area.

83mm at Mildura Airport after 65.8mm the day before. That brought the two-day total to well over half the average annual rainfall in the far northwestern Victorian city on the Murray River.

63.4mm at Bendigo Airport, the heaviest fall in the Victorian city in over two years.

57.2mm at Broken Hill after 26.8mm the previous day, which was almost exactly a third of the far southwestern NSW city’s average annual rainfall in two days.

26.4mm over three days in Adelaide, which was actually a very moderate total for the event compared to many parts of SA, but it was still the city's heaviest rain in months.

As Weatherzone meteorologist Maryam Al-Ansari wrote on Sunday, some of the rainfall records that tumbled on the weekend included 96.4mm that fell at Horsham in the 24 hours to 9am Saturday.

That was the highest daily February rainfall total on record for the town in the Wimmera region of far western Victoria, and another 61mm has fallen since in the first two days of March.

What next for this rainy system?

As you can see on the radar loop above, rain has largely cleared South Australia now, while Tasmania also got a good overnight soaking which has mostly pushed offshore for now.

But large rainbands continue to surge across Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT.

The chart below shows one model’s predicted rainfall accumulation up until late on Tuesday night. As you can see, a broad part of the southwestern mainland is in line for falls of 20mm or more, with totals potentially up around the 100mm mark in some areas.

Image: Predicted rainfall accumulation to 11pm on Tuesday, March 2, 2026, according to the ECMWF model. The Murray-Darling Basin (where rain that falls ends up in the Murray or Darling Rivers) is located within the black line. Source: Weatherzone.

What’s causing this ongoing heavy rain?

This is the same unusually long-lasting inland low pressure system which brought locally huge rainfall totals to parts of the outback, including the Simpson Desert.

The low has been slowly tracking southwards, dragging tropical moisture with it. Decaying tropical cyclones are often the engine for systems which transport tropical moisture to Australia’s southern states, but that has not been the case on this occasion.

What is the flooding situation?

Numerous minor flood warnings are in place for many of the areas mentioned in this story, but this is not yet a widespread serious flooding event, despite the heavy rainfall totals. However, that could change.

Please check the Weatherzone warnings page for the latest information.