Two rain-bearing weather systems will soak a broad area of southern and eastern Australia during the next 10 days.

While Australia just experienced its second driest May on record, the first fortnight of June will feature plenty of cloud and rain over around half of the country.

The first bout of upcoming rain will come from an upper-level trough passing over Australia from west to east between this Friday and Tuesday next week.

While this upper-level trough won't produce much rain as it crosses WA on Friday and Saturday, showers and thunderstorms will become more widespread over central Australia on Sunday and southeastern Australia on Monday and Tuesday.

In the wake of this upper-level trough will be a stronger cold front and low pressure system, which will plough over southwestern Australia between Sunday and Tuesday. This wintry system will bring rain and storms, powerful winds and possibly hail to the southern half of WA.

After hitting WA, this low and front are expected to move further east in the middle of next week, possibly delivering another round of showers and storms to southern and southeastern Australia between Wednesday and the weekend.

These two systems combined are likely to produce rain over a large area of Australia during the next 7-to-10 days. However, the exact timing and amounts of rainfall are still difficult to predict, especially for the falls occurring mid-to-late next week.

Images: Forecast accumulated rainfall over the next 7 days (Friday, June 2 to Thursday, June 8) according to the ECMWF (top), GFS (middle) and ACCESS-G (bottom) models.

Be sure to keep an eye on the latest forecasts and warnings over the next 10 days for the most up-to-date information on these two weather systems.