MILLEWA farmers are “relieved” to see significant rainfall in the dryland farming district this week, after hot and dry early-spring conditions had threatened to disrupt the growing season.
Veteran farmer Ron Hards said Tuesday’s falls, exceeding 20mm in some places, had “come at the perfect time” for many properties and that morale would be high among farmers.
“I wouldn’t quite say the weather has been unseasonal, but we did have two or three days over 35 degrees and it’s been bloody hot,” Mr Hards said as a cool change swept across northwestern Victoria.
“It’s ideal, really.”
Mr Hards said that although an El Nino weather system had started to stir talk of drought, Millewa property owners were “farming to conditions” and this week’s rain would set most crops up well.
“The early crops look like they’re going reasonably well … and the early barley crops are pretty good,” he said.
“We have a lot more tools, like machinery and chemicals, these days that help us.”
Some farmers would probably need to employ chemicals after this week’s rain, however, to combat leaf rust, which is caused by a fungus. Last year’s wetter conditions had caught some farmers out when they had failed to spray against rust.
“There were some bad rust issues last year,” Mr Hards said, and he encouraged farmers to be ready to spray.
“It’s not a great cost when you can save your crop,” he said.
By 4pm on Tuesday, 22.4mm had been recorded at the Mildura Airport gauge.
Local dryland farmers were very optimistic about the season back in June, when 80.2mm of rain was recorded at Mildura, more than three times the long-term average.
Another 34.2mm fell in July, more than half of this coming down in a single day (Friday, July 7).
But August’s rainfall figure was just 14.4mm, more than 10mm below the average for that month, and September’s measly 2.4mm was more than 24mm below that month’s average.
The average rainfall for October is 29.2mm.
The Bureau of Meteorology expects a shower or two for Mildura on Wednesday and falls of up to 3mm.
The expected maximum temperature for Wednesday is 18 degrees, which compares to a top of 37.5 degrees recorded on Monday and a high of 27.7 degrees on Tuesday, recorded at 1.25am.
No further rain is expected for the rest of the forecast period and maximum temperatures are forecast to range between 18-23 degrees between Wednesday and Monday.
