Southland farmers hoping summer would dry out their paddocks are being told not to count on it.

The El Niño pattern is forecast to hang around into summer and to bring the region more wet and windy spells, Environment Southland staff told RNZ in a report republished by Farmers Weekly.

The regional council's own records show how the pattern has shifted. Of the seven wettest Septembers in a rainfall record that goes back to the 1970s, five have come since 2020.

The council's principal hydrology scientist, Chris Jenkins, said Southland should expect more unsettled periods and temperatures that swing about more than usual. River levels were forecast to sit close to normal, on average, across the three-month outlook. That did not remove the danger, he said, because bursts of heavy rain could still lift the chance of flooding.

Jenkins said floods and wet ground hit farming hard and also meant more erosion and more runoff reaching waterways.

The national forecaster, Earth Sciences New Zealand, is picking more westerly winds than usual and a raised chance of above-normal rainfall in Southland for November through January. It expects much the same for Fiordland and the southern end of Westland.

That is a different picture from much of the rest of the country, where El Niño summers tend to mean dry weather and where farmers have been urged to prepare for drought. Westerlies that dry out the east dump their rain on the south and west first.

For Southland it arrives on top of an already difficult year. The region had its wettest winter since 1980, followed by a wet spring, and soil moisture is still high in places.

Simon Stokes, who manages land sustainability at Environment Southland, said that would make things hard for some farmers trying to get crops in. Some paddocks had been cultivated while still wet, he said, and the soil in those would need more working to break it down into a decent seed bed.

Conditions varied a good deal from farm to farm, Stokes said. "One size doesn't fit all."

The effects are not confined to farms. Balfour harness trainer Robert Wilson told Harness Racing New Zealand this week that the amount of rain this year had made it hard to work horses on his property, which needs to be reasonably dry.

A rural co-ordination group that includes the council has been meeting regularly to keep watch on conditions and line up help for farming communities that need it. The Southland Rural Support Trust can be reached on 0800 787 254 by farmers who are under pressure or who are worried about a neighbour.

Environment Southland publishes live river levels and rainfall on its website, and MetService issues heavy rain watches and warnings for the region.