Record rainfall for the month of October could see Kyabram receive almost half of its annual average rainfall in a single month.
By the end of the month Kyabram may have received almost 200mm, approaching half of the 444.6mm yearly average for the town.
It has been 47 years since Kyabram has received more than 160mm of rainfall for October, the 1975 record of 162.8 broken on Monday and Tuesday - when more than 40mm of rainfall fell - taking the monthly total to 176.8mm.
Minor rainfall is expected to fall today and in the next two days, before another significant deluge of 25mm on Sunday (October 30).
In the 58 years that rainfall records have been kept in Kyabram it has rained for an average of 8.8 days in October. In 2022 there had been 13 days of rainfall recorded, to yesterday.
The average for October, since 1964, is 38mm. Twice in October 2022 that figure was beaten in a single day, with 41mm on October 13 and 38.8mm on October 14.
Twice, on October 22 and October 24, there has been more than 28mm recorded in Kyabram.
Those four days of rainfall are eclipsed by the record single day of rain, which occurred during the last major flood event in Kyabram on October 4, 1993 — when 105.9mm of rain came in a single 24-hour period.
In recent years Kyabram weather enthusiasts often measure the amount of rainfall in the town by the amount of “overflow’’ into the Ern Miles Reserve on South Boundary Rd — formerly known as the Ky Drainage Basin.
On Monday water was flowing over the banks of water storage facility on South Boundary Rd on Monday, flooding a dip in the cycling and pedestrian path close to the Lake Rd intersection and inundating the adjacent reserve.
Page 8 of today’s Free Press revisits some of the flood events the town has experienced in its history, while former councillors and fauna park managers explain the role they played in preventing episodes such as 1956, 1974 and 1993 on page two.