Heavier falls occurred in the northern inland of South Australia and near Alice Springs, which had its coldest October day since 1968.

This followed the third-hottest September in 138 years of records.

The inland low deepened quickly once it entered the Mallee region, and heavy rain fell over most of the Wimmera and the western district of Victoria.

Warrnambool recorded 55.6mm to 9am on October 7. This was the town's wettest October day since 61.7mm on October 29, 1969.

Local flooding occurred at both Warrnambool and Port Fairy, which had its wettest October day since 2013. At that time, there were bushfires in the Blue Mountains.

The western district town of Camperdown has now had three successive months of 100mm or more from August onwards.

Since 1877, there have been five other occasions when August to October each had more than 100mm rainfall in the same year at Camperdown. These were in 1952, 1975, 1992, 2010 and 2013. Those years were all wetter than average in North East Victoria except for 2013, which alone set up a fierce heat wave in mid-January 2014.

The extreme heat in northern Western Australia and across to the Northern Territory has returned with a vengance the last few days, with 43.5 at both Roebourne and Marble Bar.

Another inland low, with very isolated thunderstorms over the interior at present, looks set to deliver more rain to our region by this weekend, but gaugings will be variable.

Darwin was swamped by 113mm rainfall to October 8, its wettest October day since 116.8 on October 25, 1880. Following 86.8mm in September, this makes a total of 238mm up to October 10. This is already the third-wettest September-October period at Darwin, with more than half of October left to go. The two others were in 1954 and 1978.

Three others of just more than 200mm at Darwin were in 1916, 1988 and 2010.

Each of these five cases led to heavy rains in our region by the first week of November, which does look certain to happen this year.