Trucks were among the large objects lifted by the floodwaters in the swollen Tweed and Wilsons Rivers. Credit:AAP The monthly total reached about 806.8 millimetres - thanks in large part to Friday's falls of 324.8 millimetres alone - and was the town's most for any month of the year, Acacia Pepler, a climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said. The scale of the catastrophe triggered by Cyclone Debbie has already resulted in almost 20,000 insurance claims across NSW and Queensland as of Monday morning, worth $224 million. The industry expects the number of claims to climb. "The industry is doing all it can to anticipate and respond to the needs of affected policyholders," Campbell Fuller, a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Australia, said. The industry had already dispatched "about 350" claims processors and other staff to north Queensland alone, he said. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was also visiting Lismore on Monday, declined to criticise insurers.

John Monk looks at his boat which is still tied to the verandah of his house in Murwillumbah. Credit:AAP "Prevention is the key and mitigation is the key, and it's important as we rebuild infrastructure to learn the lessons from the events that damaged them on this occasion," Mr Turnbull said. Attention has focused on whether Lismore's levee, completed in 2005 to protect the town from one-in-10 year events, should have been built to a higher level. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull meets emergency service personnel. Credit:Dan Himbrechts, AAP Local residents have also complained soaring premiums had prompted many of them to ditch their flood insurance.

"We'll look very favourably on increasing the height of the levee if that is the decision that is taken by the local community," Mr Turnbull said. "Clearly it's important we make Lismore as resilient to flood as possible," he said. As a river city, Lismore has "always been vulnerable to flood but clearly a higher levee has a lot to commend it". Wet March in Sydney and the state The heavy falls capped a wet month for NSW, with rainfall about 82 per cent above average. (See bureau chart below of March rainfall.) Along with Lismore, towns such as Glen Innes, Yamba and Grafton also posted their wettest March on record. Sites such as Boat Harbour collected 668 millimetres over a two-day period.

More rainfall is expected along the NSW coast most days this week, potentially hindering some of the clean-up efforts. Lismore, for instance, may get about 5 millimetres each day with as much as 15 millimetres on Friday. "They are not massive totals but obviously it's not pleasant," Tom Hough, a meteorologist with Weatherzone, said. For Sydney, showers are likely to ease into the evening and return most days this week, he said. On current forecasts, Tuesday may be the wettest with as much as 15 millimetres expected for the city. Last month, Sydney had its wettest March since 1975. Seven days had at least 25 millimetres, the second-most on record for the month, the bureau said.

Sunshine at Sydney Airport averaged just 4.5 hours, making it the least-sunny March since 1989. Record heat Despite the lack of sun, Sydney had another relatively warm month with record warm overnight temperatures for March. The average minimum temperature was a mild 20 degrees at Observatory Hill, eclipsing the previous record - set just a year earlier - by 0.3 degrees. "The nights were just persistently warm," Dr Pepler said, adding NSW also set a record for March minimum temperatures.

"It was also the second warmest for mean temperatures" in NSW, she said. The hottest March for mean temperatures was also set in 2016. All of the eastern states recorded very much above or record high overnight temperatures for the month. (See bureau chart below.) Weatherzone is owned by Fairfax Media, publisher of this website.