Tamworth water supply: Chaffey Dam and Lake Keepit boosted during wettest December in decades

More than 223mm of rain was dumped on the city in December 2020, according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) weather station at Tamworth airport, during periods of both heavy deluges and soaking rain.

Only 2.8mm fell from the sky during the same time last year. That means almost 100 times more of the precious resource fell in December this year than in 2019.

The city smashed the record for wettest December day, when the BoM gauge notched more than 92mm of rain in just 24 hours on December 21.

READ ALSO:

Tamworth was close to beating another long-standing rain record for the wettest December, but dry skies in the final hours of New Year's Eve saw the city miss the mark by mere millimetres.

The current record was set in 1947, when a total of 224.9mm was clocked at Tamworth's old BoM weather station in Taminda.

As residents soaked up the many rainy days December brought - all 15 of them - Chaffey Dam was lapping up water that fell in the catchment.

The BoM station at the head of the Peel River, near Nundle, ended the last month of 2020 with 201.8mm of the wet stuff in the gauge, making it the wettest December in a decade.

Rain bucketed down and brought the Peel River back to full flight, and it surged into Tamworth's main water supply.

Chaffey Dam entered summer at 33 per cent full, but by New Year's Eve, it had been bolstered to 41 per cent and triggered a drastic drop in water restrictions.

The dam was holding 8,000ML more water at the end of December than it was at the start - the equivalent of 3200 Olympic swimming pools.

It was a watery end to the year for Lake Keepit as well, with the dam level rising from 26.5 per cent to 35 per cent.

Split Rock Dam doubled its capacity in December, hovering at 9.2 per cent in the final hours of 2020.

Dungowan Dam - Tamworth's back up water supply - filled up for the second time this year just before Christmas and was spilling over the edge.

While green grass, gushing rivers and growing dam capacities have been good signs for the Tamworth region, the rain has caused its own drama for emergency services.

Tamworth's State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers responded to more than 100 calls for help at all times of the day and night during the first few weeks of December.

The Peel River raged through town at the "moderate" flood level on December 22, and a huge police and paramedic rescue operation was sparked when two young men tried to float along the swollen river in a blow-up boat.