Heavy rains in May and June, coupled with a weekend of snow in August gave the impression 2019 had been drenched.

But incredibly, unless another 202mm falls in the next two months, it will be the 18^th year in the last 21 that the city has received less than its long term average rainfall.

So far this spring we've seen 76.4mm of rain, just over half of the average rainfall to the end of October.

Only three months this year (May, June and August) have seen rainfall above the monthly average with the total at just 484.4mm for the year to date. And it's a downward trend that has been going for 60 years after the period between 1939 and 1958 when the city averaged almost 750mm per year.

Yes there has been dry years, such as 2006 when only 301.88mm fell or in 1967 when we saw 343mm in the gauge and the wet years like 1960 (995.7mm) and more recently in 2010 (879.6mm), but the overall trend is heading downwards quickly.

If it continues in the current decline, by 2038, we might see only 500mm per year on average and potentially those dry years of 2006 or 1967 will be repeated much more often.

In the past 20 years from 1999-2018, Ballarat has averaged 588.08mm a year, down on the long term overall average by just on 100mm which is 686.2mm.

Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) climatologist Lynette Bettio said Ballarat's pattern fits in with record low rainfall seen across much of southern Australia in past two decades,

"We've really seen large scale shift in the weather," Ms Bettio said.

"This is part of the shift in known response to global warning, we don't see those frontal systems which we used to rely on for widespread rain.

"If you take out May and in some respects June, it has been a very dry year. You can go all the way back to January, just 4mm that month fell in Ballarat (down from 31.2mm average)."

The BOM 2018 State of the Climate report shows Australia's southern states are in the longest sustained period of dry weather since records began. "The drying trend has been most evident in the southwestern and southeastern corners of the country," the report says.

"Since 1999, this reduction has increased to around 26 per cent. For the southeast of the continent, April to October rainfall for the period 1999 to 2018 has decreased by around 11 per cent when compared to the 1900 to 1998 period.

"There has been ... a decrease in the incidence and intensity of weather systems known as cut-off lows in the southeast regions of Australia. Recent years with above-average rainfall were generally associated with drivers of higher than usual rainfall across Australia, such as a strong negative Indian Ocean Dipole in 2016, and La Nina in 2010."

ON September 1 this year, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a statement saying spring would be clear and dry.

Two months into the season and that prediction has very much come to fruition with both September and October proving to be well below average with its rainfall and well above average with its sunshine.

In October, Ballarat saw an average temperature of 18.6 degrees, up from the usual 16.8 degrees but it took a long time to warm up with maximum temperatures failing to climb above 23 degrees until the 23rd of the month.

But when the heat came, it came fast, with seven days in the last 10 averaging more than three degrees above average.

Our top temperature for the month came on Wednesday just gone. Officially reaching 29.8 degrees with days of 29.5 and 29 were also recorded in the recent 10 days.

Rainfall for the month was just 30mm, down on the usual 66mm with the majority falling between October 15 and 20. The wettest day was October 17 where 10.6mm fell.

That Thursday also proved to be our coldest day of the month, with the mercury topping out at 10.6 degrees.

This has come on the back of a September when we received just two-thirds of the annual rainfall.

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