Riverina farmers – and in fact producers from throughout Australia – have been keeping a close eye on the Inigo Jones Longterm Weather Forecast Facebook Page. 

Inigo Jones died on November,14, 1954 but his work and accuracy in weather forecasting methods is still talked about and followed. 

Kikoira landholder Mark Hoskinson, “Fernleigh” told The Rural he keeps an eye on the predictions made by the Inigo Jones site and watches with interest to see if they come to fruition. 

He said going off past history this forecaster had been accurate.

That said, information from the Bureau of Meteorology was still taken into account too.

But the predictions on the Inigo Jones site and the social media chatter that accompanied these forecasts was considered interesting. If you want to test it out the Inigo Jones page has predicted rainfall for this region on Thursday and Friday.

However, rain is not what is needed in the Riverina where farmers are aiming to “dry out” winter crops. 

Mr Hoskinson has completed the harvest of wheat crops at his place. But that was just a case of timing and the fact crops were drier than others. 

He grew wheat and barley. And said the results were “nothing to write home about.” And although the headers had finished the job at Kikoira he said it certainly wasn’t indicative of what was occurring throughout the Riverina and southern NSW. 

“Harvest is shaping up to be a long drawn out affair,” he said. “Just as the weather started to warm up this week we then had more rain forecast,” he said. 

“People are saying it is a mixed bag. Some people are getting reasonable quality but the yields are not there,” he said. 

The variances in results could be attributed to frosts and patchy rain earlier in the season as well as sowing and farming techniques.