A major cyclone[4] in the third week of January gave substantial rain to most of New South Wales and caused high winds that killed seven people, but it was not until February that the pattern of abnormal rainfall over NSW and Queensland became firmly established.
Strong high-pressure systems over Tasmania and Victoria were virtually constant and allowed moist easterly air to flow consistently over New South Wales and Queensland.
Food shortages were particularly prevalent in Sydney and surrounding cities, and railways and roads were repeatedly cut as each successive storm flooded all major rivers.
In these two months Dubbo received a total of 420 millimetres (17 in) of rain and the flooding of March returned to the reprieved southeastern areas of New South Wales.
The continued rain and mild conditions (warm in the south, cool in the tropics) led to an outbreak of Murray Valley encephalitis which killed 19 people during the subsequent summer.
[9] It had the remarkable positive, however, of allowing the first curbs to the rabbit plague in Australia via myxomatosis, which had not spread in the dry era since 1922 because of the absence of standing water for mosquitoes to breed.
[9] December was very wet in the north, with many rainfall records in the Georgina River basin, but was hot and dry in New South Wales except around Tibooburra in the far northwest.
The extremely widespread flooding that resulted from record rains and unusually low evaporation caused at least 26 deaths on the North Coast during the winter.
However, it is probable that by then global warming and possibly Asian aerosols were influencing Australia's climate and thus these are not natural variability, which the record 1950 rainfalls above undoubtedly are.
Excluding records post-1968, when enhanced greenhouse gases has undoubtedly impacted Australian rainfall beyond (admittedly generally high) natural variability, there are no other totals over a substantial area that compare for improbability of being repeated.