71 days of rain and counting as Illawarra breaks rain records for May

Albion Park (59 days) and Bellambi (58 days) are not far behind in what has been a very wet start to the first 134 days of the year.

By Monday, May 13, Kiama had recorded 14 consecutive days of rain, while it's been 11 consecutive days of rain in Albion Park and Bellambi.

Bellambi has already had its wettest may in 26 years with 211.6 millimetres recorded and we're not even halfway through the month. The previous record of 188mm was set in 1998.

Record May rainfall has hit Kiama with 366.8mm so far this month, which is well above the previous record of 194.8m recorded two years ago.

While 295.2mm has fallen in Albion Park, it hasn't reached the record of 398.6mm that fell in May 2003.

The wet and soggy weather has led to a rush on laundromats, with people unable to get their washing dry.

"We've had record weeks at both our Wollongong and Shellharbour laundromats," WashWorks Laundromat owner Ryan Wood said.

"People are saying nothing's drying and they've got weeks of washing backed up."

The rest of this week will be much drier that the start of May with less that 1mm of rain predicted each day until Thursday.

There's a 50 per cent chance of up to 5mm of rain on Friday, and 70 per cent chance of 5mm on Saturday.

Weekend rainfall on May 11 and 12, resulted in 79 emergency calls for SES crews in the Illawarra.

"The majority of calls in the Illawarra were for storm jobs, including trees down and leaking roofs. Volunteers also provided sandbagging assistance to several residents in the region," an SES spokeswoman said.

"There was one flood rescue reported in the Illawarra, which was on Saturday in Bellambi. However, no one was in the water when crews arrived."