Weather warning: Crops cop a beating after hot and windy weather

Warm and windy weather has farmers concerned about their crops. See the latest updates and warnings.

Damaging winds are currently whipping through the major farming districts of Victoria with the Bureau of Meteorology issuing a warning for Wednesday.

Farmers in East Gippsland, the Western District and parts of the Wimmera can expect damaging wind gusts of 60km to 70km an hour with peak gusts forecast as high as 100km/hour.

The BOM has urged people in Horsham, Warrnambool, Maryborough, Ballarat, Geelong, Melbourne, Traralgon and Bairnsdale to be on alert.

The windy weather comes on top of fears that the season has started to cut out in some farming districts with a lack of finishing rain.

In the Mallee the season started off well but now farmers are concerned.

Mick Pole farms at Walpeup and said “we had virtually full soil moisture profiles at the start of the year”. But now, he can’t remember the last decent rainfall event.

In the past month Walpeup has had 8.4mm of rain.

In the past week, daytime temperatures have climbed as high as 27 degrees and that has combined with windy conditions.

According to the BOM 49.2mm has fallen at Heathcote in the past week, 38mm at Kyneton, 36.4mm at Dalesford and 30.1mm at Wodonga.

Meanwhile, South west Victoria is forecast to have a “slightly increased chance of above average rainfall” for spring, according to weather forecasters.

This follows some of the driest six months many farmers in the region have ever experienced, and warnings from livestock leaders that a lack of run off for farm dams, and low water storages looms as a “massive problem”.

Pigeon Ponds farmer Tim Leeming, who led a number of major drought field days earlier this year, said while recent rains and mild weather bolstered pasture growth, “water storage is now the big elephant in the room”.

“The water storage that many farms have on the first of September is likely to be what you have on the first of December,” he said.

“The question many people will be asking is have we got enough water and a budget for that.

“And God forbid we get a mild winter next year.”

BOM senior climatologist Jonathan Pollock said rainfall totals up to the end of winter were tracking below average for most of Victoria, South Australia and southern New South Wales.

Portions of north-western Victoria were tracking between 25 and 50mm below average for winter, while patches of southern Victoria were, so far, more than 100mm below average.

However, winter rainfall totals were close to average for central and east Gippsland and even above average along parts of the coast in East Gippsland.

In contrast, the west has received much needed rain with Western Australian farmers hoping their crop yields may be revised upwards.

Rhys Turton of York said the season has just kept improving.

After a shockingly dry start to the winter cropping season he emptied 18mm of rain out of the gauge last weekend, and another 7mm arrived in the past few days. In the past month, York has had 88.3mm of rain. He said the falls were typical in other parts of the state, too.

“I think when we see some of the crop reports from WA in the next couple of months, our yields will be revised higher,” he said.