24 November 2008
COMMENT ON RAINFALL AND STORAGE LEVELS
Our major catchments received an average of about 80mm of rain between 9am on Friday 21 November and 9am on Monday 24 November.
The Thomson catchment, which feeds Melbourne's biggest reservoir, received 97mm.
This is one of the biggest rain events in some time and it’s especially welcome because it comes when storages are at record lows for this time of year.
So far, storage levels have edged up from 33.2% of capacity on Friday to 33.6% today. This represents a net increase of approximately 6.5 billion litres – just under the equivalent of a week’s supply.
It will be a few more days before we know the total impact of this rain on storage levels, because of the time it takes for the runoff to make its way into reservoirs.
After two months of very poor rainfall, the amount of runoff from this weekend will be limited by how dry the catchments are. We've seen this in the past week, when despite good rainfall the runoff was two-thirds below normal.
The good news is that catchments are now wetter after this weekend, which increases the chances of any more rain this week being converted into strong runoff.
This weekend is the first time we've seen positive movement in the storages since they first started dropping in mid-October.
Melbourne's storages are currently at 33.6% compared with 40.2% at the same time last year – a difference of around 117 billion litres. This shortfall highlights the importance of the Target 155 campaign to encourage more water savings as we enter summer.
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