Rain continues to fall across much of Victoria today, with a front moving from the west of the state across the state’s west to the central areas.
In the past 24 hours, some areas in the state’s south-west and the Wimmera have recorded fall that exceed their average monthly totals.
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Dean Stewart said Hamilton had recorded 60mm in the 24 hours to noon today (Friday), close to its historic average September rainfall of 65.5mm. Other high totals included Cavendish at 54mm (to 9am) and Dartmouth and Mount William both exceeded 50mm.
In the Wimmera, Natimuk recorded 39mm, which is more than the 36.9mm historic average at the closest bigger town of Horsham.
Nhill was soaked with a 31mm rainfall, smashing its monthly average of 27.2mm.
Mixed farmer Glenn Mibus recorded 35mm overnight at the family property Mycumbeen, Green Lake, and said there was “water everywhere.
“There’s water running through the drains and gullies, water is flowing into dams and we’re seeing water in the recreational lake near the farm,” Mr Mibus said.
“We’ll lose some crops, but there’s plenty of upside in water, not in dust,” he said, adding the past two seasons had been very poor with drought and bushfires.
He moved sheep onto higher ground yesterday and they were benefiting from a good amount of feed.
“This time last year, we were talking about which paddock to cut for hay, but now we’ve had more rain in the past four months than we had for the whole of last year.”
Heading south, fellow mixed farmer Pete Fort said it was “very wet” at Wexford, Byaduk North.
“We had 41mm overnight and it’s continued raining all morning, so we’d be pushing 50mm now,” he said at about 11am.
He said while there’d been decent rain events in July, it had started to dry out since then – and fortunately the weather was mild when most of the 6500 ewes lambed down.
“It’s welcome spring rain – while it doesn’t look pretty at them moment with a lot of water laying around, we expect the ground water will go quickly because the grass is up and growing and will utilise it.”
Agriculture Victoria seasonal climate specialist Dale Grey, said for some farmers in the northern Mallee, yesterday’s rain was “absolutely essential”.
“Some crops were starting to show signs of stress because in the past couple of warm days, the roots haven’t been able to find enough soil moisture to keep those plants happy,” Mr Grey said.
He said the department’s soil probes in that region recorded moisture to 50-60cm, but the top 30cm of easily available moisture was all gone before the past day’s rain.
“The crops are looking fantastic with plenty of biomass and those crops in the regions that have marginal moisture will need weekly rainfalls to finish them off.”
Mr Grey said crop growing regions including the southern Wimmera and north central areas were experiencing good to great seasons.
Although high rainfall was not without its challenges, with plenty of fungal conditions being reported in cereal and legume crops.
“West of the Goulburn River generally, things look really good, soil probes in Elmore and Raywood are pretty full and the rain coming through now will probably will them again.”
Murray McDonald, Timmering, received about 8mm of rain on Thursday night, adding to what he said has been “one of the best seasons I’ve seen in a while”.
Mr McDonald, who runs about 2000 Merinos, said the rain had caused a bit of havoc as he continued his shearing on Friday.
“We’ve been busy shearing, but now we’ve had to move the sheep so they’re undercover and not getting wet before they’re sheared,” Mr McDonald said.
He said the rain was definitely well-received by his 300-hectares of crops: “It hasn’t been too much, just enough.”
He said he’s hoping for more rain to come, but that the farm is “looking as good as it’s ever looked”.
“It was a difficult summer, but this rain is as good as it’s been in a while,” he said.
Mr Grey said further east it was a case of too much of a good thing; with the north east being very wet and forecast rain would see further crop losses on low-lying areas.
Ray Penberthy manages a farm at Violet Town and said they’d been on flood alert for the past fortnight.
“For three months in a row, we’ve had rainfall totals above 110mm,” he said.
The crops on the clay flats are waterlogged, the conditions have been challenging to young livestock and Mr Penberthy has been unable to get hay out to some mobs of cattle in the centre of the farm.
Matt Hurse received about 30mm of rain overnight on his Moolort mixed farm, and said he was grateful not to have received too much more.
“They were forecasting a bit more, but what we received was enough, we were already damp, so the ground would have got too waterlogged,” Mr Hurse said.
He said the recent rain would help to boost things along, after what’s already been a “perfect” season in the Central Victorian locale.
“It’s good to have this weather to help us out for the start of spring, it’s going to help us get some sort of a crop now,” he said.
“It’s been a long time since I said that at this time of year.”