Much-needed rain relief may be on its way by the end of this week with the potential for some good falls in Sydney and drought-hit parts of the state.
The promising combination is a low-pressure trough moving across NSW and a high-pressure system that will set up in the Tasman Sea, Anita Pyne, a forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology, said.
"The instability comes from the trough and the moist tropical air stream comes from the high pressure system," she said.
While Ms Pyne was keen not to "get any false hopes up", she said the parched north-east part of the state could get some much-needed rain.
While meteorologists caution that significant disagreement remains among the main weather models, coastal regions may be getting their best rain in weeks or longer.
Joel Pippard, a meteorologist with Weatherzone, said the rain event appears unlikely to be an east coast low, which would typically linger near the coast and bring heavy rain and strong winds.
Sydney could get some "fairly decent" totals, with perhaps 20-30 millimetres over the three days from Friday, he said.
The updated bureau forecast has Sydney receiving as much as 4, 25 and 15 millimetres on the three days, respectively. On the low end of the range, though, the city may collect as little as 9 millimetres in total.
So far this year, Sydney has collected about 505 millimetres of rain at its Observatory Hill location, compared with 909 millimetres in a typical January-August period, he said.
- Weatherzone is owned by Fairfax Media, owner of this website.