A dust storm rolled across the base and some debris was blown across the Stuart Highway as the storm arrived just after 6pm.

The weather station recorded 56mm of rain from the storm which missed a large chunk of Katherine.

Fierce winds are caused a lot of downed trees across Katherine around this time last year.

Katherine East did best with about 35mm but most other areas recorded much less and there was little rain at all to the north of the bridge.

Leliyn (Edith) managed to score a bit better than 30mm from the same system which struck Tindal.

The Bureau of Meteorology is saying widespread rainfall is now expected over parts of northern Australia.

A monsoon trough which provided ideal conditions for tropical cyclones Blake and Claudia to form off the northern Australia coast has moved offshore.

As a result, monsoonal conditions are no longer occurring across northern Australia, although significant residual moisture remains over the region.

This increases the likelihood of widespread rainfall over parts of the northwest of the country and northern Queensland in the coming week.

Meanwhile, a monsoon trough and associated tropical low is establishing over the northern Coral Sea, east of the northern Queensland coast.

As a result, the risk of tropical cyclone formation over waters to the north of Australia has reduced.

While monsoon-like conditions were experienced over northern Australia this past week, and some locations experienced heavy rainfall, official thresholds used to determine the monsoon onset at Darwin were not met.

Monsoonal flow was too shallow and did not last long enough over Darwin for monsoon criteria to be met.

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