According to GWM Water, the region's reservoirs - which are primarily clustered in the Grampians - received varying amounts of rainfall, from 15mm at Rocklands Reservoir in the west to 35mm at Lake Bellfield near Stawell.

"We had quite a mix of rainfall across our catchments. That's meant we've seen small increases at our reservoirs, but really we'll be relying on further rainfall to keep that runoff coming and keep the flows going within the catchments," Kym Wilson, GWM Water's storage manager, said.

While the rain might have been a boon for farmers, occasional strong showers are not enough to ensure a consistent supply in catchments.

"Coming into June our catchments were quite dry. We had a couple of months of below average rainfall through Autumn, so the rain that we had this week, and a week prior, a lot of it has just soaked into the catchment, wetting it up and getting it primed for future rainfall to run off," Mr Wilson said.

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"When the catchments dry out, so when it rains, the ground soaks up a lot of that rainfall before anything starts to run off. We've got the point to where the grounds pretty wet out there, so if we keep getting rainfall events that are pretty regular, every week or every two weeks, then we'll start to see more water running off.

"If we have the rain we saw this week, and then very little rain for a few weeks, then that needs to soak in and wet the ground again before we start to have rain running off.

"So we're really dependent, particularly in the winter months, of having regular rain to keep things wet, and keep things running off."

"The best case is we get regular rainfall events," Mr Wilson said, adding that ideally, the rain would come in small to medium sequences so as not to flood the system.

However, Mr Wilson said that this is the fourth year in a row where reservoir inflows have been less than 35 per cent than annual averages.

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"We've been in a really, really dry sequence for the past four years," Mr Wilson said.

An important factor in ensuring reliable water throughout the region has been the Wimmera Mallee Pipeline.

"It is really important. It's probably the single biggest climate adaptation infrastructure project we've had in the region in relation to water supply.

Mr Wilson said the chance of being on water restrictions would be significantly increased without the pipeline.

"It's really what's been supplying the level of security that we've seen over recent years with the reservoirs. If we didn't have the pipeline in place, our reservoirs would be a lot lower at the moment than they currently are," he said.

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