LAST Friday at 6pm, grain receivals at CBH Group sites around the State ticked over the one million tonne mark.
It was a point which took more than five weeks to get to, with the first 37.22t load of GM canola having been delivered to the Geraldton Terminal on September 27.
However just as farmers were really getting into the harvest swing, mother nature struck again, delivering massive showers and heavy hail storms across large sections of the grainbelt at the beginning of the week.
On Monday morning, farmers in the Esperance region tipped out more than 30 millimetres from their rain gauges.
But the worst was yet to come as storms set in around the Wheatbelt on Monday afternoon and night.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Wongan Hills recorded the highest tally in 24 hours with 61mm of rain, but luckily for farmers in the area, the majority seemed to fall on the townsite itself.
Those in the Merredin area weren't so lucky, with the bureau recording 33mm and growers reporting more than 40mm in a lot of cases.
For some growers who received showers in the double digits, it was the second time in as many weeks and will undoubtedly cause delays to harvest and concern around falling numbers.
Worse than that was the hail which dealt a devastating blow to the Narembeen area.
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Nutrien Ag Solutions agronomist Jeremy Padfield was on his way to assist with a fire which had been started by lightning when the storm hit and having been stuck in the middle of it, he said it was like nothing he had ever seen before.
"The cloud you could see where this storm was going through was just insane - I've never seen such dark clouds so low to the ground before," Mr Padfield said.
"It was in front of us when we got the message that the hail was getting really bad, so we pulled over and let it pass over us.
"Some big hail stones did come down where we were, but nothing to the extent of what was experienced about two kilometres north of the CBH receival site at Wogarl."
It's hard to know exactly how far the hail spread and how many people were affected, but for those who were, finding out just how bad the damage was could be delayed by a day or two as getting onto paddocks will likely be difficult due to the rain.
For those that were underneath the heaviest of the storm, Mr Padfield said he would be expecting to see crops completely flattened.
"Given the season that we've had, there are some really big and heavy crops around so you would expect to see some crops literally flat on the ground," he said.
"How much of that, if any, is harvestable, people won't know until they get in there, but there is going to be significant losses, there is no doubt about that."
In the areas where the hail wasn't as heavy, the crops likely weren't completely flattened, but it would have certainly knocked some heads off onto the ground.
For Narembeen farmer Jessie Davies, she was thinking that was the likely scenario after 52mm fell, including 35mm within a 30 minute period at about 5.30pm on Monday night.
However, the main hail storm hit slightly to the north and wasn't as bad as other farms nearby.
"We were eight hectares off finishing our first paddock of canola when the storm came, so it was very disappointing not to be able to finish that," Ms Davies said.
"The rain started coming and wasn't letting up - we were only working less than 1km from the house and by the time we got home we'd already had 20mm, so it came down very quickly.
"We also got 30mm the weekend prior, so we're up to over 80mm within a week and we've definitely had some hail damage, so it's been a surprising start to harvest."
With so much rain across vast parts of the grainbelt, deliveries to CBH are likely to slow down again this week after finally picking up pace last week.
As of Tuesday morning, a total of 1.56mt has been received by CBH which included 673,481t in Geraldton, 487,408t in Kwinana North, 167,887t in Kwinana South, 180,067t in Esperance and 60,813t in Albany.
With grain having now been received across all zones, the majority of sites are expected to open in the next few weeks.
While the recent hail and heavy rain had frustrated and delayed harvest for growers in some regions, CBH had used the time to continue outloading and clearing sites, reducing its carry position even further to approximately 2.8mt across the network.
