Rain Brings Some Smiles

RAINFALL was a welcome relief to farmers on the weekend with the eastern side of the Upper Hunter area enjoying the highest rainfalls and while there was less rainfall in Merriwa and Cassilis it was still perfectly timed for crops.

Chris Kemp, a farmer in Merriwa and executive counsel member on New South Wales Farmers said rain will allow crops to germinate well, but farmers to the east were still needed more rainfall to fill dams.

The 9th hole on Scone golf course on Sunday.

“We had 37 mils (millimetres) for the whole period and it is enough to give the germinating crops a good move on having a fair bit of moisture underneath them now and it will mean that we can go pretty much right through until September with just regular falls,” said Mr Kemp.

“For the livestock it means the annual pastures of rye grass, the clovers and the trefoil all get a really good move on now that they’ve got the moisture,” he said.

“The other thing is too our ground temperature hasn’t dropped too much yet, we’ve only had a couple of frosts which is good for getting growth happening,” he said.

“It was pretty good rain whether you were a cropper or grazier,” he said.

“The rain didn’t really run-off though, we didn’t have any run-off here so more just went in, which is good but we mainly rely on bores here but people in lighter country their dams are all really low because we haven’t had any run-off for a couple of years,” Chris Kemp said.

Jim Callinan, livestock agent for Ray White Taylor said there are smiles on the faces of local farmers, but another 100 millimetres of rain would make those smiles much wider.

“The rain has been great, as long as we get some more following on,” said Mr Callinan.

“This will help turn things around, but we need a lot more to get the dams to fill and get the creeks flowing,” he said.

“We need a good 100 mils to get things started and another 100 on top of that,” he said.

“They’d be pretty wide smiles now, but if there was a bit more the smiles would be much wider,” Jim Callinan said.

Overview from the Bureau of Meteorology

A steady trickle in the gutter while the rest soaks in the dry earth.

The most amount of rain fell on Saturday evening.

In the time between 9am on Saturday and 9am on Sunday the Bureau of Meteorology recorded the following:

• Scone 56 ml
• Parkville 55 ml
• Murrurundi 55 ml
• Barrington Tops 51 ml
• Merriwa 18 ml
• Cassilis 11 ml

While rainfall has only been recorded for 16 years in Parkville, 55 ml is the highest on record for the month of June.

Unlike the coast, which had wind gusts of more than 100 kilometres an hour the Upper Hunter only had wind of 40 kilometres an hour and there were no flood warnings in the area.

The low pressure cell passed over Seal Rocks at approximately 5:30pm yesterday and continued tracking south.

There is a chance of showers today and a cold front predicted for mid-week may bring more showers.