South Australia Sees Helpful Rain, But It's Not Enough

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Good news for a few farming towns in South Australia — recent rainfall has finally tipped them over the monthly average. Snowtown in the Mid North, and Cummins and Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula, have picked up 47mm, 62mm, and 45mm of rain so far this month. Most of that fell just last Wednesday. For Kimba, this marks two months in a row of above-average rainfall — something that hasn’t happened since 2022.

Now, that might sound like things are on the up — and in some ways, they are. But when you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, it’s clear there's still a long way to go. For Snowtown and Cummins, this is the first wetter-than-average month in over a year — 13 months and 9 months, to be exact. And even with the recent rain, long-term deficits remain pretty significant: Cummins is still 310mm short, Snowtown 300mm, and Kimba 250mm below the 24-month average.

This kind of shortfall isn’t limited to just those towns — most of SA’s farming areas have only received about 50–60% of their usual rainfall over the past two years. So, while the topsoil is starting to show signs of improvement, things are still pretty dry deeper down.

What’s changed recently? Cold fronts and low-pressure systems have been dropping by more often, and some of them are pulling in extra moisture from the Indian Ocean — always a good sign for farmers.

Looking ahead, it’s likely we’ll see more of this kind of weather through the next few months. Occasional northwest cloudbands could bring decent rain, meaning most regions are on track for a fairly average season. And after the dry spell we've had, average sounds pretty great.

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