Sydney had its wettest September day since 1883 which flooded roads, stopped train services and brought down powerlines leading to blackouts to a wide area of the east coast of New South Wales.
A 38-year-old fell overboard from a boat in Sydney Harbour and was pulled unconscious from the water. He was resuscitated by paramedics but died later in Royal North Shore hospital.
Transport delays
Buffeting winds on the harbour also caused major delays to Sydney ferry services because of the heavy seas. The gale force winds also delayed flights in and out of Sydney’s international airport.
With Sydney in the grip of drought conditions the rain was regarded as a welcome sight with significant fall in the Warragamba catchment area, some exceeding the average rainfall for the whole of September.
Sydney's September average is 68.6 millimetres, but up to 5am this morning some areas had received as much as 74 millimetres.
The State Emergency Service received about 50 calls overnight mainly for blocked drains and gutters with some minor localised flooding, but there had been no reports of property damage.
Winds hit more than 50 kilometres an hour but worse is to come. The weather bureau is predicting gusts of up to 90 kilometres an hour later today.
Snowfalls
Meanwhile there were snowfalls in the western New South Wales towns of Orange, Oberon, Lithgow, and Guyra on the northern tablelands.
A low pressure trough moved through the NSW central tablelands, triggering showers and storms which fell as snow in some parts.
A spokeswoman from the Lithgow Visitor Information Centre said she got a pleasant shock when she woke this morning.
"It's really funny," she said. "I got up and thought, `Ooh, something weird's going on outside', and I looked out and went `Oh', because that wasn't expected.
"It was covered where I live. I had snow everywhere. My car was way under snow. One of the other ladies here, only her backyard had snow in it, and then when you got outside the town boundaries there was no snow."