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Anthony Sharwood, 27 Jan 2022, 2:51 AM UTC

Heavy rain likely during Big Bash cricket final

Heavy rain likely during Big Bash cricket final

There's good news and there's more good news regarding the rain that's due in Melbourne on Friday evening during the final of the Big Bash at Marvel Stadium between the Perth Scorchers and Sydney Sixers.

The first piece of good news is that the roof will likely be closed, meaning play can go ahead no matter what the weather does. For the benefit of the cricket fans in the room, we'll talk a little bit more about the "roof rules" a little further down this story.

The second piece of good news is that Melbourne could use a decent drop, as the city has had below-average rainfall so far this summer.

Let's start with Melbourne in December…

If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology's rainfall map for December 2021 below, you'll notice that Melbourne is on the borderline of the yellow and pale green zones.

  • Yellow areas received 10-25 mm for the month. Pale green represents 25-50 mm for the month.
  • Melbourne recorded 27 mm at Olympic Park in December. That's just under half the monthly average of 59.1 mm. Most weather stations in the metro area had similar December readings.

Image: Rainfall for Australia in December 2021. Source: BoM.

So overall, the La Niña rain that fell heavily on the eastern third of Australia in December narrowly missed Melbourne.

That was also the case for most of January – a point well illustrated by our story this week (about a grass fire in parched western Victoria) and our recent story about the very wet High Country, northeast of the city.

But late January is about to get wet

The first four weeks of January were also relatively dry in Melbourne, with rain recorded on just five of the first 27 days to 9 am this morning, for a total of 39.4 mm (monthly average 46.8 mm)

But tomorrow, the forecast is for an 80% chance of rain in Melbourne. A range of 20-40 mm is possible, most likely in the afternoon and evening, with rain possibly falling quite heavily at times.

If the rain delivers, it'll push the city well over its monthly average.

Western Victoria has already copped heavy rain in the past 24 hours. As we wrote this morning, Mildura received 80.2 mm overnight, its heaviest daily January rainfall on record, and around four times its monthly average.

So wet weather is making its way towards Melbourne as a trough moves across the state, and it should arrive just in time for the Big Bash final. (That is, if the injury and Covid riddled Sydney Sixers manage to get a team on the field!)

"The Roof rule"

As mentioned, rain should not disrupt the cricket (or the Australian Open tennis) as both are played in stadiums with retractable roofs.

For those who are interested, Marvel Stadium has an interesting rule with balls struck by batters that hit the roof. Back in the day, any ball that hit the roof when it was closed was declared "dead ball" – as in no runs, bowl it again.

That wasn't fair as many of those shots would have gone for six. So the rule now states that if you hit the part of the roof that retracts (when the roof is closed), it's a dead ball.

But if you hit any other part of the roof or structure (like the massive supporting beams), you're awarded a six – the theory being you've hit it far enough that you would have cleared the rope comfortably.

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