As the Southern Slopes region sweltered through days of mid-40s temperatures and total fire bans, Hilltops Mayor Brian Ingram said this year would “tell the story” for many businesses.

“We just hung on last year. We’ve been pretty fortunate in our area,” Cr Ingram said.

But he warned that continuing drought, combined with other factors such as online shopping, could have an impact, particularly on businesses catering to the rural sector.

The drought conditions affecting most of the state are likely to continue into 2019, according to the NSW Department of Primary Industries’ latest state seasonal update.

Anthony Clark from the DPI said large parts of western and central NSW remained in the drought or intense drought categories of the NSW monitoring framework, despite some isolated storms throughout December.

Cr Ingram said the Harden area was “looking pretty green” after storms in the early part of January.

Official climate forecasts from the Bureau of Meteorology indicate that the next three months are likely to exceed average daytime and overnight temperatures across the state, meaning drought conditions are likely to remain at current levels or intensity over the coming months, Dr Clark said.

“While some parts of the state received scattered storm activity leading up to the new year, this hasn’t been sustained enough to allow for significant pasture or crop production,” he said.

“That means there has been very minimal opportunity for dryland summer cropping, and there are very low levels of ground cover so farmers have had to continue feeding their livestock.”

Dr Clark said a DPI dam survey had revealed how serious conditions had become in parts of the state, particularly in the drought-gripped western areas.