EARLY spring rain across wide swathes of the south west and central inland has buoyed hopes the forecast La Nina will come to pass.
An upper trough which moved across the interior combined with tropical moisture to generate storms across the Maranoa, Warrego, central west, Channel Country and parts of the north west.
Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Alex Majchrowski said four towns had smashed their September daily rainfall totals since the weather set in on Saturday.
Vergemont Creek, between Longreach and Windorah, recorded the highest falls, receiving 130mm over three days from Saturday until 9am on Tuesday.
Stonehenge received 84mm in the same time frame, Wahroongha 72mm, Isisford 65mm, Bogewong 56mm and Blackall 53mm.
Angus Emmott, Noonbah Station, 130km south west of Longreach, received 142mm during the downpour, which started on Friday night.
Mr Emmott said it was highly unusual to receive that sort of rain in September.
"We're not used to getting this sort of rain, it's very unusual," Mr Emmott said.
"The last decent rain was back toward the end of March, we had a reasonably good summer here and we've got quite good dry feed up, but up toward Longreach and Barcaldine way is horrific, they had very little.
"We're very lucky and hopefully the La Nina will bring it down everywhere."
Mr Emmott said after eight years of drought, they had unloaded cows and calves to focus on backgrounding about 1000 predominantly Droughtmaster steers for buyers in the Gulf Country.
His 50,000 hectare property is starting to rejuvenate.
"It was already looking very good, we've got channels right through and the Thomson River.... even the river flats are full of water.
"The country is going to be beautiful, the cattle were going ahead already but they're going to be really good now."
Also celebrating was Heather Hahn, who received 51mm at Burkobulla Station, north of Eromanga in the storm that passed over on Friday and Saturday.
"It was amazing, we'd been quite lucky this year," Ms Hahn said.
"We moved to Burkobulla in November four years ago and the country was deteriorating, there was not much rain. This is the first really good season we've had."
Mr Majchrowski confirmed Ballera had its heaviest daily September rain on record on Saturday, with 50.8mm falling, eclipsing a decade long record of 44.8mm which fell on September 4, 2010. Barcaldine Downs had 44mm fall on Sunday, beating its previous daily September record of 39mm in 2008. Wahroongha also beat a decade long record with 37.2mm falling on September 20, above the 35mm recorded on one day in September 2010.
And the north west also enjoyed record breaking rain with Julia Creek receiving 25.2mm in the 24 hours to 9am Tuesday, beating its previous September daily record of 10.6mm back in 2016.
But while the weather system isn't hanging around, with a dry and gusty change to come through on Friday, Mr Majchrowski said there was still a high likelihood of La Nina developing as we move deeper into spring.
"La Nina is three times as likely to develop compared to average and there's a 75 per cent change of it developing entering into spring.
"La Nina does typically result in higher than average rainfall in eastern Australia, with lower daytime temperatures and higher evening temperatures due to increased cloud cover."
