Soil Moisture Snap Shot 26 May 2026

Dale Grey, Agriculture Victoria, Bendigo

The BoM AWO modelled soil moisture decile for perennial pastures currently shows wetter than average values across the Eyre Peninsula. The far northern and far south are ranked much wetter at decile 10 and most other areas are decile 8 to 9. Central and far western areas are predicted to be closer to normal.

The BoM AWO modelled plant available soil moisture percentage, is the background image in the following two maps. This predicts that most perennial pasture, or weedy fallows would be 10-25% full. The southern tip is slightly wetter at 25-50% full. Comparing this to the soil moisture probe network shows crop paddocks have generally, but not always wetter values. The northern regions are wetter than the south with values often greater than 80% full.

Paddocks are either similar or wetter to a month ago reflecting the stormy nature of the rainfall. Three disparate locations have significantly increased by greater than 20 percentage points. The two Yeelanna paddocks increased by 39 and 44 percentage points respectively, the Cungena paddock increased by 25 percentage points and the Buckleboo paddock increased by 28 percentage points.

The Sustainable Agriculture EP project is supported by the Australian Government through funding from the Natural Heritage Trust under the Climate-Smart Agriculture Program and delivered for the Eyre Peninsula Landscape Board, a member of the Commonwealth Regional Delivery Partners panel by AIR EP, EPAG Research, PIRSA and Ag VIC.