Dartmouth Dam's history-making spill is almost finished for now

Flooding rains saw the Murray River storage dam spill for the first time in 26 years back in late September.

Many thousands of people have taken the trip to the remote dam to witness the spectacular sight as water has thundered down the rocky spillway.

This is despite the devastation the river flood is still causing to downstream communities and into South Australia where peak flows are expected to arrive at Goolwa around Christmas.

The La Nina induced spring rains have finally stopped and the Murray Darfling Basin Authority says river flows had fallen accordingly and can be safely contained inside the storages.

Dartmouth is officially still 101 per cent full but without further rain that should fall back to 100 per cent in the next week.

"Inflows to Dartmouth Dam continue to recede and are now well below outflows. At this rate flow over the spillway are expected to cease next week," the authority said in its latest update.

Further downstream, the river's main "operating" dam, the Hume Dam at Albury is officially 97 per cent full.

Inflows to the storage are now less than the outflows which remain necessary for river flows.

Unfortunately for flooded downstream communities, the damage has already been done as far as the swollen river makes its months long journey out to sea.

Since Dartmouth Dam was completed in 1979 it has previously spilled four times, each in the 1990s, and now the fifth in 2022.

Built as a drought reserve, it is the largest capacity dam in Victoria and the highest structure of its kind in Australia and stores almost four million megalitres of water.

The Bureau of Meteorology says this third year of the La Nina's impact to Australia's weather is fast weakening and still expected to end about March to April next year.

Until then, the bureau's climate forecast suggests a wetter summer across much of Australia than average.