Farmers happy for more rain

More than 50mm of rain fell on Busselton in the past week and more is on the way in the days to come.

Wednesday was Busselton’s wettest day, with 23.2mm of rain pelting the region.

The downpour was a relief for Jindong dairy farmer Grant Evans, who said he had hoped for the rain to come earlier and get the grass growing in the region.

“We had some rain at the start of April and got excited because we thought we were up and running but then we had three weeks of hot weather, ” he said.

“The earlier the grass grows the better so we can put the cows out to graze and lower our production costs. It’s been a bit of a late start, but now it’s here it can just keep on coming until the end of October.”

Mr Evans said he was not concerned about bogging as there was still plenty of dry dirt to soak up the rain.

He said he would be happy if the area got an inch of rain a week for the next five months or so to keep things ticking over.

Busselton has received 88.2mm of rain so far this month and is on course to exceed the May average of 106.2mm.

April was much drier than usual, with only 6.2mm of rain compared to the monthly average of 37.3mm.

Bureau of Meteorology media manager Neil Bennett said told the Times the South West had a 70 per cent chance of above average rainfall this winter.

“The recent rain has been as the result of frontal activity combining with very moist tropical air from the north west leading to the heavy falls, ” he said.

“The fronts themselves have been slow moving, meaning they are producing the rain over the area for quite some time.”