Can you believe only 14mm of rain was recorded on Wednesday afternoon? At the time we went to press a little more was added to that. You may have been hard pressed to find one person complaining about the downfall, and it was pretty much common knowledge that more would have been better.
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But nevermind, a “wettish” few days across the weekend was predicted to put a few smiles on some faces, and even though there seem to be only small falls on offer, they do continue into next week.
Local farmer Ken Waters said his property on Gara Road, 20 kilometres East of Armidale, received 16mm on Wednesday and “just enough to make you go inside” on Thursday.
“This rain means quite a lot,” Ken said.
“Since the end of August the weather patterns seemed to have turned around a bit. These falls will be good for the cattle.
“This rain has been very patchy. We were fortunate to get some whopping storms in January on parts of the property, and it shows now. Stock will go down to one end of the paddock.”
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Ken said he had stopped feeding his sheep, but was still feeding cattle.
A spokeswoman from the local SES said Armidale had no call-outs, and there were only a half-a-dozen calls from the wider region, which involved a couple of large trees down and overflowing guttering.
Lightning was the main cause of power outages to about 200 homes to the east of Armidale on Wednesday night. Essential Energy’s manager community relations northern, David Crough, said crews were kept busy from about 4pm and into Thursday.
“The storms caused a number of faults, including blown fuses, on the electricity network and crews worked as quickly as safety allowed to identify these faults and then make repairs so that power could be restored for customers,” Mr Crough said.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank customers for their understanding as we worked to restore power after the storm.”
Mr Crough reminded poeple to report fallen or damaged powerlines immediately by calling 13 20 80, and to stay at least eight-metres away from a powerline and anything in contact with it.
So, just how far behind are we? How much rain do we need to bring the area back into an average year? Well, from January to October we’ve usually had 784mm of rain, this year we have 612mm.
The average for this month is 68mm; we’ve had 26.2mm and need more to catch up.
