At 9am yesterday  Orange had 10 millimetres of rain overnight and other than a “small chance” of thunderstorms over the weekend, that would be it for the wet stuff as temperatures soared to about 35 degrees after Wednesday, Mr Sharpe said. 

“The storms might happen but they’ll be brief, they won’t bring much rain.”

While it is good news for the weekend’s sport fraternity it is not good for the region’s farmers. 

Forest Reefs farmer Alistar Carson said he had been buying feed for his sheep for a while but will not start to panic until late February. 

“We really want a   break in mid to late February,” he said.

“If it rains now it won’t really stay in the soil, we want a big fall in February so we can get the early oats in.

“If it rains now and you plant, it’s a bit risky.”

Mr Carson said it had been weeks since there was any rain worth measuring at Forest Reefs but he had not had to sell-off too many head of sheep out of his flock of about 1500.

“We’ve only sold off the ones we’ve been able to fatten up so that’s good and I hope we can keep being able to do that,” he said. 

While Orange received a few millimetres of the rain, the heavy falls were seen in Parkers where it had 116mm  over one and half days. 

Today [Saturday] is expected to be 28 degrees, Sunday 29 degrees and the mercury will rise steadily until a top of 35 degrees on Thursday.

nicole.kuter@fairfaxmedia.com.au