The wet side, in numbers
The mountain wall wrings extra rain out of the sea air before it climbs, and the difference is real: long-run climate averages put Thirroul at about 1,355 mm of rain a year against roughly 1,185 mm in central Wollongong, with Shellharbour down south at about 1,256 mm. Same strip, different sky. If you are moving in the northern villages, plan as if rain is a coin toss, because over a year it nearly is.
What a prepared crew does differently
- Stages under cover. Furniture queues on the veranda or in the garage, not on the lawn. The gap between house and truck is crossed quickly, per piece, not browsed.
- Wraps before the sky sees it. Mattresses, sofas and anything fabric get wrapped inside the house on a wet day, not at the tailgate.
- Runs floor protection both ends. Wet-shoe traffic across your old carpet costs bond money; across your new place it costs goodwill. Runners go down first.
- Re-plans the carry. Steep drives at Stanwell Park or hillside steps at Coledale change character in rain. Sometimes the answer is a smaller truck closer to the door; sometimes it is simply more patience on the slippery leg.
- Keeps electronics in the cab. TVs and computers ride dry, full stop.
What you can do the night before
- Group your must-stay-dry items and tell the crew, so bedding, books and electronics get the first covered runs.
- Put down your own towels at both doorways; cheap insurance for floors.
- Line boxes of books or linen with a garbage bag before packing. It costs nothing and turns cardboard's weakness into a non-event.
- If your move is flexible, watch the radar and talk to us; shifting a start an hour either way often threads a band of rain entirely.
Should you postpone for rain? Almost never. A crew that plans for the wet loses surprisingly little time to it, and the Illawarra's rain rarely settles in for a whole day. The moves that go wrong in rain are the ones that planned for sunshine.
Sources
- Rainfall figures are long-run climate normals for each locality, derived from Bureau of Meteorology gridded climate data as published in national datasets (Geoscape and ABS derived, CC BY 4.0). They describe long-term averages, not any particular week's forecast.