Katherine will be relying on storms rather than extended monsoons into the Top End for the rest of the wet season.
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The Bureau of Meteorology says the monsoon trough - from tropical cyclone Wallace in the west, to a tropical low northwest of Darwin and further east to another tropical low east of Papua New Guinea - is expected to move further from the northern Australia coastline in the coming days.
That weak trough only extended as far south to about Pine Creek anyway with Katherine recording 20mm so far for the week.
The bureau said a strong high-pressure system moving across southern Australia is helping to push the monsoon trough northwards, and also causing the trough to break down along much of its length.
The tropical low to the northwest of Darwin is also expected to track westwards in the coming days and has a low chance of reaching tropical cyclone intensity later this week.
Over the past week, the monsoon trough has generated significant rainfall across some coastal parts of northern Australia, mainly over the northern Cape York region and the northeast and far northwestern Top End of the Northern Territory.
This rainfall was very welcome across the Northern Territory, where rainfall during the current wet season (October to April) has been well below-average.
However, overall wet season rainfall remains significantly less than average across the Northern Territory and most of northern Western Australia for the 2018-19 wet season.
The bureau says the broadscale wind pattern that supported the monsoon will dissipate and a monsoon break will become established across northern Australia.
Being relatively late in the wet season, there is a high probability this will be the last active monsoon period for the 2018-19 wet season.
The bureau has already said the transition to the dry season is already under way.
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