‘Half a year’s rain in half a month’: Farmers face wettest summer in years

Farmers in NSW are hiring planes to combat weeds as paddocks flood from weeks of heavy rain.

Parts of NSW and Victoria have been hit by heavy rain and flooding this week, and more wild weather is on the way.

Rice grower Scott Williams said he had had more than 160mm since the start of January on his property at Murrami in the NSW Riverina.

“I haven’t seen a wet summer like this for 30 years,” he said.

“We’re getting towards half our annual rainfall in half a month.”

The nearby weather station at Griffith has recorded more than 140mm since the start of the month, well above its January long term average of 33.6mm.

Meanwhile Lake Cargelligo, north of Griffith in Central West NSW, recorded 193.8mm since the start of the month, and Albury has topped 213mm for the month so far.

Morning spent moving sheep to higher ground after 46mm in a storm last night and 119mm for the year has meant part of our place in now underwater. What a start to the year! ⛈🐑🚤🥴 pic.twitter.com/yc68U7QlRB

— Emma Ayliffe (@em_ayliffe) January 15, 2022

Mixed farmer and agronomist Emma Ayliffe said sections of her property at Lake Cargelligo had gone underwater after 46mm fell on Friday, taking her total since November to more than 300mm.

“It caught us a bit off guard. We weren’t expecting to get that wet that quickly,” she said.

Ms Ayliffe managed to move her sheep to higher ground, but said she was now trying to work out how to control weeds on paddocks she was unable to access with machinery.

She said she was contemplating hiring a plane to treat the weeds, but operators were “flat out” and there was a 10-day wait to get a plane off the ground.

Meanwhile farmers in western Victoria are cleaning up after they were hit by storms and heavy rain last week as farmers.

Grain grower Harry McIntyre said he had faced a front of lightning and spot fires on Thursday as a storm descended on him.

“We were pretty nervous at one point,” he said.

Luckily rain following the lightning trail smothered fires on nearby properties about five minutes after they started, he said.

“We were the lucky ones that had the rain with the lightning,” he said.

But the downpour was enough to do some damage to his crop.

Mr McIntyre said he had managed the majority of his 2200ha cropping program without weather damage, but the bad weather had hit his final 60ha.

“Red wheat starts to shell out really early, and I imagine when we do get going again there is going to be a yield decrease,” he said.

He received a downpour of 100mm on his property at Cressy, and 45mm on a property at Shelford.

“It all came down in about 25 minutes. I was in the shed and I’d left the header idling with the lights on and I couldn’t even get to it to turn it off,” he said.

Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Sarah Sculley said more storms were on the way this week for both NSW and Victoria.

Widespread rain was expected for much of NSW on Tuesday, with falls of 15-30mm expected for catchments that were already saturated and affected by floodwaters.

Isolated showers and thunderstorms were expected for inland parts of northern NSW from Wednesday, clearing from Friday, she said.

From Saturday through to Monday, a moving rainband pushing in from South Australia was expected to bring potential heavy rainfall to western parts of NSW and Victoria.