In the last week there has been moderate to heavy falls of rain in the lower and middle areas of the Hunter River catchments, breaking the dry spell that had gripped many areas of the Hunter since December. The heaviest falls occurred in the Lower Hunter and the Central Coast. In the 24 hour period ending 9am on the 5/2, many locations within these parts of the Hunter Region recorded totals in excess of 75 mm. The wettest place was Maitland, with the official Met Bureau station recording 104 mm, followed by Wyong with 102 mm. The rain had finally put out a bushfire in the Wollemi National Park that had been burning since Christmas.

The rain had only caused minor flooding in some places. Most of the flooding was caused by overflowing drains and creeks. There was no major flooding as the upper catchments of the Hunter, Paterson and Williams rivers received only light to moderate falls. As it can be seen in the table below, Scone and Salisbury only had 29.8 mm and 128.8 mm for the week respectively, compared to Morpeth (Berry Park) receiving 210.4 mm and Gosford with 298 mm.

Rainfall totals for seleted stations

	Gosford	Williamtown	Morpeth	Salisbury	Jerrys Plains	Scone
1/2/02	26.2	29.0	26.0	37.6	2.4	0.2
2/2/02	100.8	17.6	13.8	12.8	5.2	4.0
3/2/02	0.8	2.6	0.6	0.4	0.0	0.0
4/2/02	22.2	12.6	11.0	16.0	0.3	0.0
5/2/02	100.8	58.4	91.2	24.6	70.4	25.0
6/2/02	41.6	50.6	56.6	35.4	3.4	0.6
7/2/02	5.6	12.2	11.2	2.0	12.6	0.0
Total	298.0	183.0	210.4	128.8	94.3	29.8

Units in millimetres (mm). Data supplied by the Bureau of Meteorology except for Morpeth (Berry Park), which is a private station

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