Australia Weather News

The blue boathouse on the Swan River at Crawley was partially submerged. - ABC

A cold front over the southern half of Western Australia has dumped more than 60 millimetres of rain on Perth, and has given some struggling farmers a boost, but has failed to reach all agricultural areas desperate for a drenching.

Perth recorded 61.2 millimetres of rain since 9:00am yesterday after an overnight downpour, with all but 0.8mm of that falling after 7:00pm last night.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said it was Perth's wettest June day for 31 years.

It said Perth had only had three wet days this month so far, compared with a June average of 14.7 days.

The State Emergency Service said it had received about a dozen calls for help, mostly for water damage to homes, while there was also minor flooding on some roads around the metropolitan area.

Perth can expect another 15 to 20 millimetres of rain across the day, but it was likely to fade quickly as the front moved inland.

Riverside Drive in the city and riverside parts of the Kwinana Freeway were likely to be inundated, the bureau said, because of abnormally high tides.

It is little relief for farmers desperate for rain for winter crops, with northern and eastern areas of the Wheatbelt unlikely to receive more than 2 to 5 millimetres.

They said the late break to the season would affect their yields and could wipe up to $2 billion off the WA economy.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said farmers were also unlikely to reach their June rain requirements.

Forecaster Neil Bennett said farmers might not see any rain for the remainder of this month.

"The heaviest falls were right along the west coast and as a result of that we can't really say whether this has helped the farmers or not but we don't expect that they got the 15 to 20 millimetres. For farmers unfortunately there is no rain on the horizon."

Chairman of the grain growers' cooperative CBH Wally Newman, who farms at Newdegate in the Great Southern region, said if farmers did not get rain within the next week, it could cut last year's harvest in half.

"You could halve last year's grain production of 16 million tonnes quite easily if it doesn't rain by the end of June," he said.

"So we could go down to eight million tonnes, and you are looking at $200 to $300 a tonne, so you are looking at billions of dollars."

Mr Newman said some farmers had already given up because it was too late to produce a crop this year.

"There are farmers that have already hit their deadline [for rain], so they'd be waiting for next year and preparing for next year," he said.

"Other farmers, they need rain very desperately."

York farmer Rhys Turton said about 15 millimetres had fallen on his property overnight, but it was not enough.

"It's not a significant amount of rain. It'll certainly help, it's certainly very welcome. But we've had virtually no growth in the last three weeks," he said.

"I think grain yields this year will be significantly lower than they have been for a number of seasons.

"The whole industry suffers. There's no winners in a dry year."

ABC