With the daily precipitation datasets at 83 stations in Jiangxi from 1961 to 2010, the variations and characteristics of persistent heavy rain are analyzed. The results show that there are 82 times of persistent heavy rain processes which have significant seasonal and annual variations in Jiangxi. They mostly distribute in June, but none of them occurs in winter. It has two inter-annual variation periods of about 3 a and 6 to 8 a, and an inter-decadal variation period of about 30 a, which has been decreasing to 25 a since 2000. There is uneven spatial distribution of persistent heavy rain, which is more in middle of Jiangxi and less in south and north. Large scale weather patterns of the persistent heavy rain in Jiangxi can mainly be classified into 4 sorts: trough pattern, south trough north ridge pattern, typhoon pattern, and transition pattern, in which, trough pattern is 34 times (the most), typhoon pattern is 9 times (the least), and transition pattern has the longest duration.