“There’s every chance we will have another low-pressure system, another weather event later next week.

“Let’s learn from this and if you aren’t as prepared as you think you should be, look at how you can do that for future events ... in the next six to eight weeks.”

A series of oceanic and atmospheric phenomena are affecting rainfall over the Australian continent.

The La Nina climate driver over the Pacific Ocean, which brings wet weather to Australia, is now in a rare third year in a row.

The Indian Ocean Dipole, meanwhile, is in its negative phase, which increases the chance of above average spring rainfall for most of the eastern two thirds of Australia.

Victoria SES chief operations officer Tim Wiebusch said rain events that could exacerbate existing flooding were possible over the next two months.

“Water storages are absolutely full. Our catchments are absolutely saturated,” he said. “So every time we see reasonable rainfall totals, unfortunately we’re going to see some communities back under flood warnings again.”

There are two other, lesser-known climate drivers also at work. In the region between Tasmania and Antarctica, strong westerly winds blow almost continuously and are associated with storms that move from west to east, bringing rainfall to southern Australia.

The Southern Annular Mode, or SAM, refers to how far north and south these westerly winds move. SAM is in a positive phase and likely to remain this way into early summer, bringing an increased chance of rainfall, though this varies by region.

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The lesser-known Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO, is also active. This eastern-moving “pulse” of wind and cloud circles the tropical areas of the globe and, when active, increases our chances of above-average rainfall.

“What we saw over past few days is a perfect example of the type of weather we have when all of these climate drivers are active at the same time,” Domensino said.

Readers are advised to stay across emergency services information in their area, download the VIC Emergency app and monitor the SES website.

There are 50 points across the state where people can get sandbags.

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