"It's a continuation of what we've seen since the start of the year," Andrew Watkins, the bureau's manager of long range forecasting, said.

NSW as a whole has had its driest year since 1965 with record daytime temperatures, worsening moisture loss through extra evaporation.

"It increases the water stress - animals are drinking more, trees are sucking up more," Dr Watkins said. "Unfortunately winter hasn't turned anything around."

Recent rains in northern NSW and southern Queensland had not "really put a dent into the drought situation", he said, noting that Broken Hill had just 9 per cent of typical winter rain, Canberra about half and Sydney about 60 per cent.

Northern and eastern Victoria had also had below average winter rainfall and odds favour that trend continuing.

The spring outlook could have implications for many communities if the forecasts are accurate.

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Farmers in NSW and Victoria hoping for timely rains to finish off their crops may need to be particularly lucky.

Stream flows, already low, could dwindle further, further delaying the seasonal refilling during the cooler months, particularly in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. "Some still haven't start to fill,"  Dr Watkins said.

Coming on top of a dry start to the year, the spring outlook is also "not the best for the fire season", particularly for forested areas across eastern Australia, he said.

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Bureau models now also point to an El Nino event forming in the Pacific by the end of spring, a climate pattern that typically results in below-average rainfall across eastern states.

At this point, any El Nino is likely to be "weak at worst", unlike the powerful event in 2015, Dr Watkins said.

While longer heatwaves typically arrive with El Nino years, the main effect rainfall-wise may be a delay in the arrival of recovery rains -implying drought hit areas could be in for an extended dry spell for some time yet.

With an El Nino, "you'd really then be starting to think of autumn before you'd expect to see above-average rainfall", Dr Watkins said.

With the numbers yet to be finalised, Australia looks to have notched about its tenth-driest winter overall.

It will come in as a top-five warmest winter for daytime temperatures, while overnight minimums were closer to long-run norms, he said