Rain misses storages

Jessica Benton
ONLY flooding can refill Geelong’s struggling water storages after rain in the past week failed to match predictions of a deluge, according to a weather expert.
Geelong Weather Services’ Lindsay Smail said the region’s water storages had actually fallen 0.1 per cent for the week despite the onset of rainy weather since last Friday.
The storages were down to 18.7 per cent capacity on Wednesday.
However, Mr Smail hoped run-off from the recent rain could still lead to an increase in storage levels.
“The catchment has gone down 0.1 per cent, which is what happens during the process of when the rain actually falls to when it flows into dams. It can take several days to come down the channels,” he said.
“Another factor for the loss is that the ground is just still so dry. We need hundreds of millimetres of rain in the next few months.
“In fact, we need floods as far as the water storages are concerned.”
Mr Smail said last week that forecast rain could increase storage levels from a low of 18.8 per cent capacity to the mid-20s.
But this week he said just over 40mm had fallen in the region’s catchment last weekend despite predictions of to 125mm.
Mr Smail said dams outside the region’s catchment received “big drinks”. A Gellibrand catchment at Weeaproinah received 112mm of water over the five days, while Mount Sabine, at the edge of the Otways, recorded about 100mm.
“Needless to say, between 40mm and 100mm is quite a good amount of rain and if we had that again next week and the following week then things would start to move again but I can’t see that happening just yet,” Mr Smail said
Rain patterns were predicted to ease over the next week to only a few showers, he said.
Mr Smail forecast that Geelong would receive less than 10mm for the next week, while its water catchments would probably have up to 40mm.