{"id":441317,"date":"2026-02-23T14:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/441317\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T14:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:32:12","slug":"scone-breaks-daily-rainfall-record-in-2-hours-but-farmers-say-more-is-needed-to-rid-region-of-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/441317\/","title":{"rendered":"Scone breaks daily rainfall record in 2 hours but farmers say more is needed to rid region of drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cobwebs have been washed off the gumboots in the NSW Upper Hunter after storms delivered a soaking at Scone, but farmers say much more is needed to recover from the drought.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Meterology’s (BOM) Scone airport gauge caught 102.6 millimetres in the 24 hours to Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

The Yarrandi Bridge gauge notched up 108.4mm in the same period, but some private gauge readings were closer to 150mm.<\/p>\n

Senior meteorologist Ilana Cherny said most of it fell in just two hours.<\/p>\n

“[That is] the annual highest rainfall record for [the Scone airport] station, where we have 33 years of data,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The previous record for the whole day was actually 86mm back in December 2002. Now we’ve seen 86mm fall in just a 2-hour period, so certainly very significant.”<\/p>\n

But the intense storms were very patchy in the rain they delivered.<\/p>\n

Scone airport is on the western edge of town and less than 5 kilometres away, in the town itself, only 15\u201325mm fell in the same 4-hour period.<\/p>\n

The villages of Parkville and Aberdeen, a 10-minute drive north and south of Scone, respectively, recorded less than 10mm in the same timeframe the airport gauge reached triple digits.<\/p>\n

The BOM also observed a 96 kilometres per hour wind gust at the Scone airport site.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ross Watson says while the storms have brought significant rain, they will not fix the drought overnight. (ABC Upper Hunter: Amelia Bernasconi)<\/p>\n

Single storm won’t fix the season<\/p>\n

Farmer and agronomist Ross Watson said while records may have been broken, the rain would not immediately fix the dry conditions.<\/p>\n

He said the storm seemed centred over his property.<\/p>\n

“It was just relentless \u2026 we got close to 150mm,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Most people got far less than us, we were just in the intense zone of that rain cell.”<\/p>\n

The Hunter has been experiencing ongoing dry conditions, with slow pasture growth and livestock numbers decreasing over a number of months.<\/p>\n

The region has not faced dry conditions as severe or lengthy as the southern and western parts of NSW, where farmers have been trucking in feed and water<\/a> for months.<\/p>\n

In August last year, parts of Scone were under flood evacuation orders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then, Mr Watson said “the taps had turned off”.<\/p>\n

His Saturday night rainfall was on par with the total rain recorded since spring.<\/p>\n

“We would normally get between September and January about 300mm and we’ve only had 146mm.”<\/p>\n

But he said this single event would not turn the season around.<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

Ross Watson recorded nearly 150mm in less than 6 hours at his Middle Brook property. (Supplied: Ross Watson Agriculture)<\/p>\n

“Many people might think, ‘He’s lucky, he’s out of drought now, he’s just had 5 inches’ \u2026 but they might have had [smaller totals of] more effective rain that means it’s in the root zone for the plants to use.”<\/p>\n

Mr Watson said the intensity of the rain meant much of it would not actually be absorbed by the soil.<\/p>\n

“Most of this rain just ran off \u2026 and with a lot of paddocks being bare around the district, that’s likely to cause erosion of soil,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It didn’t have time to absorb and unfortunately if you dig into these paddocks now, this has only really changed the soil moisture profile in those top few inches, which will only last us a week or so.<\/p>\n

“So we really need that follow-up rain, that gentle soaking rain over multiple days.”<\/p>\n

Mr Watson said another 75\u2013100mm was greatly needed to turn the dry conditions around before winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cobwebs have been washed off the gumboots in the NSW Upper Hunter after storms delivered a soaking at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1047,1397,160621,160619,90,160620,160618,8465,160622,56,54,55,126152],"class_list":["post-441317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-drought","tag-environment","tag-rainfall-record","tag-record-rain","tag-science","tag-scone-dry-spell","tag-scone-record-rain","tag-storms","tag-summer-rain","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weather-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}