Rainfall and runoff: year to date

The last two months have seen low levels of rainfall in Canberra and thus a decline in runoff. However, we have still had 246 mm of rainfall for the year, about average, and runoff of close to 33,000 megalitres.

The runoff total needs to be explained, however, as it is likely that we have had significantly less than this - perhaps as low as 28,000 megalitres. The reason is that I have factored in releases of 130 megalitres a day from Canberra dams over the last month or so. ACTEWAGL were definitely making releases of that magnitude over some of that period, and there were additional releases from smaller dams over one weekend. However, I am pretty certain that these releases stopped a couple of weeks or so ago. To ensure that I overestimate rather than underestimate runoff, I am working on the assumption that releases ceased as of 31 May.

It should be pointed out that even this overestimated runoff total is well below Canberra's average runoff for the first five months of the year. But it is better than last year: at the same point, we had had 21,000 megalitres of runoff.