Rain set in across the weekend and is expected to remain until at least Wednesday with temperatures unlikely to climb above 12 degrees throughout this week.

And we probably won't see much change during the next three months as winter 2020 is anticipated to drench most of the country.

In it's seasonal predictor, the Bureau of Meteorology said; "Winter (June to August) is likely to be wetter than average for most of Australia (60-80 per cent)".

"Similarly, July to September is also likely to be wetter than average for most of the southern two-thirds of the continent (60-75 per cent chance)."

That essentially means we can expect grey, cold days and warmer nights as cloud cover hovers across most of the country, particularly in southern areas.

Predictions for a wet winter come on the back of a much wetter than average autumn for the Ballarat region and Victoria as a whole. For many parts of the state, it was the wettest autumn since 1989.

In Ballarat every month throughout autumn was also cooler than average, bucking the trend of recent years which had seen predominately warmer temperatures.

The average temperature for the three months was 17.03 degrees, down on the usual 18.2 degrees. April was two degrees colder than usual, while May was one degree colder.

Incredibly, we only hit 30 degrees once throughout the whole three month period, all the way back on March 1, while the coldest day was May 1 where we struggled to just 8.1 degrees.

We also saw just on 200mm of rainfall across the season, highlighted by 104mm which fell in April alone, more than double the monthly average.

Not surprisingly, the wettest day occurred in April, on Saturday April 4, when the city was drenched by 30.6mm. This came on the back of a wet start to the month where 22.4mm fell in the first three days.

The year so far to May 31, Ballarat has received 310mm, up from the usual 240.6mm.

Another unusual aspect of the season came in the middle of May where we saw five successive nights with an average temperature more than five degrees below the norm. This was caused by a stationary high pressure system which blocked cloud cover and wind.

On that five night period from May 14-18, only once did the overnight low sit above zero, with the coldest night coming on May 14, a chilly -1.2.

The month of May just gone is the fourth month out of five this year to have seen a greater than, or average, rainfall across the Ballarat region, but unlike last year May rainfall was much closer to average this time.

Traditionally May in Ballarat is one of the wettest months and last year it proved the case last year was when the drought broke, when 138.4mm fell for the month.

The month just gone, Ballarat reached it's rainfall average right on May 31 as scattered showers continued on Sunday.

But 2020 so far has been very damp with more than 300m so far. January, February and April all recorded rainfall totals above the average.

April was particularly wet with 104mm, while January saw almost double its usual total when 70mm fell.

May also failed to hit any great heights in terms of heat with our warmest day coming in at just 17.5 degrees and only one night stayed above 10 degrees.

Considering the warmest temperature recorded in this city in May is 26.1 degrees, we were a long way short.

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