A recent photograph of Burrendong Dam in the NSW Central West offers hope for its recovery from a long and dreadful drought.
But, as the image taken by aviation school Wings Out West shows, the dam is far from full despite welcome and significant rain.
Burrendong Dam is one of the largest inland storage facilities in NSW and can hold more than three times the 500 gigalitres (GL) of water in Sydney Harbour.
But in February, the dam that supplies Dubbo with town water, reached a low 1.47 per cent of capacity.
This week, WaterNSW released data showing the dam's resurgence because of rain across February, March and April.
A WaterNSW spokesman revealed the rain had produced inflows not seen for years.
"There's been 40 gigalitres of inflows in recent days, best inflows since the drought started," he said.
"The last three months around 119GL of inflows arrived at Burrendong Dam."
Earlier this week the dam was sitting at 12.1 per cent of capacity.
It was holding an estimated 140GL which could fill 56,000 Olympic swimming pools.
One megalitre is equal to one million litres and one gigalitre equals 1000 million litres.
The WaterNSW spokesman said persistent flow in the Macquarie River upstream of the dam, and the Cudgegong River, was "likely to push volume slightly higher in coming days and weeks".
