When will eastern Australia’s wet weather end and will we get a La Niña ‘three-peat’?

"Now we're saying late autumn," Watkins says. "It certainly has had an injection of life over the last couple of weeks from those stronger trade winds."

The bureau's latest outlook, updated on Thursday, reveals there is an increased chance of unusually high rainfall for the April-June period - in the top 20% of historical records, no less - across the northern tropics and most of the rest of Queensland, and small areas of western and coastal New South Wales. In fact, 1.5 to 3.5 times the usual chance.

Now many of those areas do not typically get a lot of rain during this time of year so it may not take a lot to be above normal.

Still, as Watkins says, for areas that are sodden or have lately been flooded, above-average rain could be bad news.

"Even if the rainfall might not be as extreme as what we've seen more recently, the landscape is now very wet, the rivers high, and the dams full," he says. "So even relatively small amounts of rain are something to be cautious of."

The big floods from late February and early March in south-eastern Queensland and coastal NSW left a damage bill in the billions. Insured claims have already reached $2.22bn as of Thursday, and counting, the Insurance Council of Australia says.

And so, we should see the back of it soon, and look forward to drier times, at least where it has been wet. (Western Australia and western Tasmania wouldn't mind some of the rain sent their way.)

Ruling it in or out just now is actually not so easy.

As it happens, we are coming to the so-called "autumn predictability gap" (or spring gap, if you're based in the northern hemisphere).

It's the time of the year when the Pacific and other regions enter a reset mode with temperature differences across the ocean basins relatively small.

"Basically it means that there's not a strong push one way or another," Watkins says. "Small influences have the greatest effect at that time of year because the [sea-surface temperature] gradient isn't particularly strong."

The Pacific does call many of the weather shots, at least for eastern and northern Australia from spring into summer. But it is not the only influence and sometimes it is also not the dominant one.

The Southern Ocean, for instance, influences how far north or south storm tracks move.

A positive phase of the so-called Southern Annular Mode, as we have seen during much of the past summer, means drier conditions in southern Australia. Tasmania's summer was the driest since 1980-81.

Come winter and into spring, the Indian Ocean can be the main driver of how much rainfall finds its way across the continent and soaks - or parches - south-eastern Australia.

The bureau stresses the five models it uses to predict changes in the Indian Ocean Dipole - which tracks the temperature gradient across the tropical regions - have low accuracy beyond autumn.

For the limited skill they have, though, the models currently indicate the IOD will be in its negative phase by next winter.

Should that transpire, we might well see above-average rainfall patterns extending well into 2022.

For some, then, the rainy season may have a ways to go yet.