The soaking rain of Sunday - 46.8mm was recorded at Maitland airport - was the second heaviest downpour over a 24-hour period in the last 12 months and took the month's rainfall to just over 92mm.

Most important it saw dam levels continue to rise.

The overall level of the Hunter's four major water storage sites - Grahamstown and Chichester dams and Tomago and Anna Bay sandbeds - has jumped 4.6 per cent in the past week. It is up 5.4 per cent on a week ago, and a hefty 8.7 per cent on this time last year.

Level 1 water restrictions continue to be in place in the Hunter, but with dam levels rising steadily since the start of the year it remains to be seen for how long.

A Hunter spokesperson warned against getting hopes up that water restrictions would ease just yet.

"While we have received some welcome rain since February, it hasn't created enough runoff to refill our dams and groundwater storages," the spokeperson told the Newcastle Herald.

"In a typical year, our storages would be well over 90 per cent capacity after the amount of rain we have received.

"We need to take into account a range of factors, including how far above 70 per cent storage we reach and the weather outlook, before we can say with confidence that our storages have recovered enough to warrant removing water restrictions."

The weekend's rainfall sent Chichester Dam to capacity at 100 per cent.

Grahamstown Dam, far and away our largest - it holds more than double the water of the other three sites put together - was at 73.7 per cent, Tomago Sandbeds was at 73.2 per cent and Anna Bay Sandbeds at 66.5 per cent.

Since January rainfall has been falling consistently - a far cry from the end of 2019 when October, November and December recorded total rainfall of 28.4mm. December, in particular, was bone dry with 0.6mm.

But since January the dry spell has broken with monthly rainfall figures of 38mm, 204mm, 118mm, 28.4mm, 43.8mm, 55.4mm and now 92.6mm with a few days still to go.

Rain is again forecast for Tuesday.