I've seen wetter years, Jimmy. In 2001-2 it was extremely wet. Granted the rain has been widespread, but even with the active monsoon we had that lasted a month, it only produced generally 2 days out of 7 with significant rainfall of more than 180mm in the general Darwin area, rural areas copped a bit more due to the lows that were inland stationary.
Seasonally from what I've seen since living here storm production is off a little. The last two years were more storm active by a long mile, which is surprising considering La Nina encourages more severe weather!
It's one of those grey areas amongst conversation here at the moment 'Is it wetter or has it changed' type talk. A lot say it's on average weatherwise, which is pretty broad considering the seasonal pattern shift. The monsoonal troughs really make things difficult to judge whether there's a dramatic change, if we get more cyclones then it's obviously a shift in patterns and the break periods have tended to be the norm - a few weeks without any notable precip/storms until the monsoon returns.
We've had a lot of moisture taken from the ECLs and cyclones to the west which has a dramatic impact on our wet season thus far. Even with the La Nina influence it doesn't seem anything out of the ordinary i'd say. I could gauge the rainfall as say for sure, it's been very wet, but one month or two perhaps would be wrong to attribute this season as a severe shift. In reality what is suggestive of a dramatic change here is difficult at best because our months change so surprisingly even in dull periods and when it does fire up one compares it to other years, for me this year is quieter apart from an extended monsoon this time around which is the norm...
I don't know if that answered your query JD, but there's no 'stand out' feature that I can pinpoint to say it's better or worse for us apart from an early cyclone and a couple of lows, sorry!
