Reports later revealed that between 9am on Thursday and 5pm on Friday alone, more than 100mm lashed parts of the NSW capital, including 147mm in Wahroonga in Sydney’s north.

The situation led to NSW SES responding to nearly 2,000 callouts across 24 hours.

On Saturday morning, Steve Bernasconi, from the Bureau of Meteorology, said the situation was easing and the weather system is now moving south and out to the Tasman Sea.

“The current focus is the south coast and the southern tablelands as the rain is still impacting them, but it will move out this afternoon,” he told the ABC.

“Sunday and Monday, we will see … more easing and settled trend. That said, the rivers are responding to this rain and they do have flood warnings out.”

The cancellations occurred as many travellers would have been returning from extended Easter holidays, which were the busiest post-pandemic.

Across the country, Qantas and Jetstar geared up for almost 4 million customers to travel on their domestic and international networks across almost 36,000 flights.

More than 670,000 were expected to have travelled over the Easter long weekend alone, a 10 per cent increase from the 2023 Easter holidays.

Melbourne Airport also said it was expecting 1.7 million passengers, representing a 9 per cent increase on the same time last year.

During the 17 days from 29 March to 14 April alone, the airport was expecting to average an MCG Grand Final crowd of more than 100,000 passengers each day, with the busiest day forecast to be 12 April.