WA water supply: Perth dams half full despite city shivering through wettest winter in 30 years

WA’s peak water supplier has warned Perth dams are only half full, despite the city being drenched with its wettest winter in three decades.

Perth was hit with more than 547mm of rain this winter — 120mm more than last year.

But Water Corporation assets planning general manager Evan Hambleton said Perth’s dams were only 47 per cent full, with just 35 billion litres of streamflow — water from rivers and streams — pouring into the dams this year.

That is compared to about 76 billion litres of streamflow filling the dams every year since 2014.

“Despite some of the good rainfall that you’ve seen on the Swan Coastal Plain this winter, we haven’t seen that rainfall necessarily moving inland into our catchments,” he said.

“Years and years of climate change impacts really hot, dry summers and