While the much-anticipated rain from Thursday to Monday may not have been quite as much as hoped for, the combination with cooler temps was enough to be useful to firefighters' efforts to get on top of local fires.
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The Mudgee Airport weather station recorded just over 15mm across the five days; Gulgong Post Office received 13.2mm; and Nullo Mountain in the Rylstone/Kandos area had 17.4mm.
"It definitely helped, it put a lot more humidity into the air and dampened the firegrounds, which made it easier for our crews to get in and work on them," Andrew Williams, of the Cudgegong Rural Fire Service District, said. "Getting those easterly winds with a bit of moisture made a big difference with the temperature drop, especially compared to the weather we'd been getting - which was the opposite."
It was hoped that the forecast rain would assist at the Kerry Ridge fire, with crews backburning and suring up containment lines.
"We still have RAFT (Remote Area Firefighting Team) crews from the RFS and National Parks and Wildlife Services working on hot-spots that have been identified using FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared), which picks up what we can't see with the naked eye," Mr Williams said. "They've been working on those for the last few days and helicopters have been assisting them with bucketing operations as well. It's just important to mop up those hot-spots, so there's still some work to do."
He added that firefighters are on top of the Palmers Oaky and Kellys Gap fires which were both put onto 'Patrol' last week. "There are still hot-spots popping up on those areas, so it's important that continuous patrol work is carried out over the next few weeks."
And while the storms did bring lightening, dampening from the rain and quick work by firefighters stopped struck trees starting bigger fires.
"We had a few calls come in about trees alight, so our brigades dealt with those. And we did have some lightning [Sunday] night, but haven't had any jobs come in from it," Mr Williams said. "We ask people to look out for trees that have been hit by lightning, because we need to get them out before the weather deteriorates."