Dunedin benefited from the cold snap which hit the country at the weekend but the Taieri Plain and the rest of the region missed out.
The southerly brought cooler temperatures and heavy showers to the city, mostly on Sunday, with it recording 15.4mm from Friday night to yesterday morning, MetService figures show.
However, 22km south atDunedin International Airport, only 7.4mm was recorded during the same period.
Further inland, the southerly only brought 1.8mm to Queenstown and nothing to Wanaka.
Oamaru only received 2mm.
Despite the rain, which brought Dunedin's rainfall for the month to 22mm, the city was still well short of the January average of 72mm but above the record minimum of 16.5mm.
The rain took the airport to 19.8mm for the month, its record low. Its average for January was 78.4mm.
The region's rivers draining the central lakes continued to be well below normal for this time of year but the rest of the region's rivers were holding levels above normal for the time of year.
In Southland, recent rainfall had not been enough to significantly alleviate the dry spell in the region, Environment Southland senior environmental technical officer Karl Erikson said.
The rainfall had been deceptive in that while it had been frequent, it had not translated into enough moisture to greatly improve the situation, he said.
"People look out the window and see it's raining, but as an example Invercargill has had just 6.5mm of rain in the last four days, which will have minimal effect."
Similar totals were recorded in other parts of the region with just 11mm of rain in northern Southland in the past four days, 7mm in western and coastal areas, and 12mm in eastern Southland.
The combination of low rainfall and high evapotranspiration levels had also meant that moisture had little opportunity to soak into soils, Mr Erikson said.
The only exceptions to the trend were the Hokonui Hills and the Waikaia regions where there had been 28mm of rain since Friday, he said.
The region's arterial rivers, the Mataura, Oreti and Aparima, were also all still below the annual averages for this time of year, he said.
Most in need of rainfall was western Southland which had all but missed out on the wet weather.
