While there were 15 stormy days – including six in a row from October 11 to 16 – just 33.6 millimetres of rain was recorded over 31 days at the Department of Primary Industries Research Station at Mount Panorama.

The run of passing storms over the second week of the month added about 12mm to the total in a week when farmers in the region were hoping for much heavier falls to carry winter cereal crops through to harvest.

But following the six days of passing showers there were seven days without a drop before last week when there were five wet days that only produced 13mm, although it including the best rain of the month 6.4mm.

The 33.6mm of rainfall in October brought the 10 months’ total this year to 411.9mm, around 150mm below the long term average in the district of 568.5mm to the end of October.

At the same time last year Bathurst had recorded 482.4mm of rain.

October this year had generally higher than usual levels of evaporation with two days in the third week of the month, when evaporation was running at 7.8mm. The loss of moisture to evaporation across all 31 days of the month reached 121.6mm, 90mm more than the months’ rain.

It was a month of slightly higher than average maximum temperatures and slightly lower minimum temperatures with only one overnight temperature below freezing, a -2 degrees Celsius.

November has started off much hotter than usual with Sunday’s maximum of 27.1C four above the long-term monthly average.

And another hot day yesterday followed an overnight minimum four degrees higher than average of 12.5C.

Bathurst’s hottest November day on record is 38.4C recorded in 1997.