They give new insights into the chance of rainfall for the coming season at 260 towns across Australia.

The web sites include:

• Maps showing the rainfall amount that has a 25pc, 50pc, and 75pc chance of falling over the coming season.

• Maps showing the chance of different amounts of rainfall falling, from 10 mm up to 700 mm.

• Tables showing the chance of various falls of rain at these centres.

The new sites were developed after a survey of almost 500 farmers and rural advisers who described what they wanted from a climate service.

They can be viewed on the bureau’s rurally-focused Water and the Land (WATL) website:

www.bom.gov.au/watl.

The survey was run by Managing Climate Variability in conjunction with the Bureau of Meteorology.

Neil Plummer, acting head of the Bureau’s National Climate Centre, says the bureau is keen to receive feedback about the new products.

“We’ve had very positive feedback on the Water and the Land website so far and we’re keen to make it even better," he says.

The 260 towns with detailed outlook information were chosen to give an even geographic spread across and between rainfall districts, as far as can be possible.

Each town also has at least 30 years of recorded climate data.