The Weekend the Sky Opened Up: Sunraysia’s Big Rain Event (Feb 27 – Mar 2, 2026)

If you blinked this weekend, you probably missed the moment we went from “oh good, we needed this” to “…okay that’s enough now”.

This wasn’t a gentle, soak-it-in farm rain. This was a proper Sunraysia deluge - fast, heavy, and localised enough to turn the wrong street into a creek.

The BOM numbers (Mildura Airport )

Here’s what bom.gov.au recorded at Mildura Airport across the event:

• Sat 28 Feb : 65.8 mm (24 hrs to 9am Sunday)

• Sun 1 Mar: 83.0 mm (rain since 9am / 24 hrs to 9am Monday) 

Total since Friday: 149.8 mm (most of it in basically 48 hours). 

“How does that stack up against a normal March?”

A typical March at Mildura Airport averages 18.7 mm for the whole month. 

So by 9am Monday, we’d already banked roughly 8× the average March rainfall, and March had barely started.

Where the flooding and dramas showed up

This was flash / localised flooding, not the Murray slowly rising. The sort of stuff that hits low-lying streets, blocked drains, and road dips hard and fast.

SES: busy weekend

SES call-outs climbed quickly, with reporting of 120+ requests for help in Mildura and surrounding areas (flooding, building damage, and trees down). 

Events that copped it (because of course they did)

When rain arrives like this, it doesn’t just soak paddocks, it wipes calendars.

• Drag racing at Mildura (Twilight Nationals) – Saturday 28 Feb cancelled due to heavy rain. 

• Clean Up Australia (Mildura Rural City Council) – postponed to Sunday 8 March. 

• Speedway fans: Timmis Speedway’s Wingless Sprint Stampede - Postponed