News

Rain relief for parched parts of Victoria

Heavy rain has fallen in parts of eastern SA, northern and western Victoria, and southern and western NSW as storms rumbled through overnight, while storms lashed Melbourne just after 9am Friday.

Stormy systems like this tend to produce hit-and-miss rainfall totals, and falls are not always heavy as the storms tend to be fast-moving.

But as the two-hour loop (below) to 1am Friday shows, the storms accompanied a reasonably well-organised rainband that crossed northwestern Victoria and southwestern NSW – delivering extremely welcome falls in numerous locations.

Places that recorded their heaviest daily rainfall in at least a year included:

• Robe (southeastern SA) 30mm: the heaviest day of rain in more than three years.
• Lake Victoria Storage (near the Vic/SA/NSW border in far western NSW) 28mm: the heaviest daily total in two years.
• Mildura (Vic) 28.4mm: the heaviest daily rainfall in a year.

With a population of around 57,000, Mildura is one of Victoria's most populous cities, so it's worth diving a little deeper into its rainfall stats.

As the graph for the last 12 months shows, Mildura had endured below-average rainfall for each month in 2024 from February onwards. That was until last night’s rain broke the streak, pushing the running October total above the monthly average of 26.8mm.

Meanwhile two weather stations in the Mallee region received falls slightly in excess of 50 mm, with numerous falls in the range of 25 to 50 mm in Victoria's North Central and Northeast forecast districts.

Melbourne only had 4mm to 9am, but storms moved through early in the working day, with an additional 16.2mm in the gauge by 11:30 Friday morning.

A clearing trend will set in over much of Victoria from later today onwards, although there remains the potential for severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall in the eastern half of the state throughout Friday, clearing Saturday morning.