RECORDS SET: Orange Agriculture Institute farm supervisor Pat Farrelly holds the institute’s rain gauge that measured a record rainfall for Orange yesterday. Photo: JUDE KEOGH 0301rain
RECORDS were broken yesterday with the most amount of rain recorded in Orange’s history over a 24-hour period.
In the 24 hours to 9am yesterday, a whopping 103mm fell at the Orange Agriculture Institute, 4.4mm more than the previous record set at the institute on January 24, 1992.
The most significant rainfall was between 9pm on Thursday night and 2am Friday morning when 49mm of rain was recorded.
It was not just the institute that recorded high levels of rain to 9am yesterday.
The Spring Creek rain gauge recorded 106mm, while 102mm was recorded at Kite Street and 96mm in north Orange.
Orange Airport, 13 kilometres south of Orange, recorded 109.6mm.
Rod Wykes got the shock of his life on Friday morning when he awoke to a huge tree that had crashed in his yard during the heavy rain.
Mr Wykes said his work ute parked in the driveway only received a minor ding during the incident.
“For some reason I parked it a little further back than usual,” he said.
By the time Orange City State Emergency Service had cut up the huge tree and he had made four trips to the tip, Mr Wykes was pretty relaxed about the mishap.
“What do you do, there’s worse things to happen,” he said.
Weatherzone meteorologist Rob Sharpe said the heavy rain was due to a number of factors.
“[It’s] due to a low pressure trough that is moving across the country from the north west from ex-tropical cyclone Rusty and drawing moisture in from the east coast,” he said.
“There’s a lot of moisture across the country from that.”
The heavy rain resulted in 20 call outs for Orange City SES volunteers with fallen trees and roof damage reported across the city.
Controller Kim Stevens said 10 SES volunteers were kept busy.
“It’s an average number of calls for a storm such as that where it’s primarily rain in fairly large quantities, we find it loosens up trees,” he said.
Mr Sharpe said the rain should subside over the weekend, with today fairly cloudy but a chance of a shower tomorrow.
“The start of next week we’ll see mostly sunny conditions,” he said.
Rainfall readings have been taken at the Orange Agricultural Institute since 1976.
A now superseded rain gauge at the Orange Airport recorded falls of 116.2mm on January 24, 1978.