The good soil on rain event

Soil scientist and weather watcher Rob Cumming says at least 25mm will fall across this area, but it won’t be enough to replenish deep soil moisture depleted over many years by drought. Mr Cumming does most of his work around Henty these days but regularly travels back to his hometown of Goulburn.

When not out in the field, he’s keenly watching the weather maps.

“The models are showing a monstrous amount of precipitation, ranging between 40 and 80mm, right across NSW and stretching down into the Victorian wheatbelt over the next 72 hours,” Mr Cumming said on Wednesday.

“There has been a big high sitting over the Coral Sea since last Wednesday/Thursday, which is generating moist air from Townsville to Victoria.”

This was associated with the Southern Oscillation Index, sitting on 22 points. Mr Cumming said warm Coral Sea temperatures and cooler temperatures further south were generating an on shore flow of moisture and higher than usual humidity.

When this hit the cold front coming in from the Bight, we were in for a “bunch of rain.”

These patterns had been swirling for a few weeks. He predicted most would fall on the Southern Tablelands tonight and Saturday.

With Canberra showing 80pc probability of receiving 32-80mm, he thought Goulburn would be much the same.

“I look at models two weeks in advance and quite often they weaken. But this one is strengthening,” Mr Cumming said.

“If you look at the 16-day forecast, it’s showing rain all the way through...It’s real cropping rainfall and people will make a lot of money out of it.”

Around Goulburn, Mr Cumming thought it was one of the better seasons he’d seen since moving here in 1977.

But producers would still be looking for moisture to finish the season.

Deep down, the ground had taken a battering over the past eight or nine years of drought.

“A lot have to understand our moisture deficit,” Mr Cumming said.

“We need another season like this to get our deficit back. We need this 25mm.”

He noted that in the 1984 drought, about 80pc of heads on perennial grasses at Crookwell had died. The situation was similar now; plants were coming back but struggling because they didn’t have the deep soil moisture.

While the Southern Tablelands was looking reasonably good, the longer-term rainfall outlook was not that healthy.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting good rainfall for the Tablelands until the end of April, with a dryer May and June and moderate falls for the rest of the year.

Elsewhere, Mr Cumming said the looming rain band would replenish the Murray River. Hume Weir at Albury, the river’s largest dam, is 83pc full with current daily inflows of 9130 megalitres per day. Burrinjuck Dam at Yass is 94pc full with inflows of 191Ml/day.

Wyangala Dam, which eventually feeds Goulburn’s catchment, is at 37pc capacity with daily inflows of 191Ml.

Regional director with the Department of Industry and Investment, Anne Muir agreed that deep soil moisture was still a problem in this area.

“While things are looking good, we’ve had some heavy frosts and hot, windy days, so we’ve probably had higher evaporation than rainfall in the past few months,” she said.

“It has impacted but generally, I think primary producers are feeling more positive about the future. We’ve had some showers to keep us going and the crops are looking good.”

Mrs Muir said farmers would need time to financially recover but with good lamb prices, they were facing a happier quandary of whether to sell or hang onto stock for breeding purposes.