As the floodwater begins to recede the extent of the damage is becoming clearer.
Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers president David Clark said there were now two levels of impact across the district.
"Those away from the rivers have waterlogged soils, a lot of feed wastage and poor utilisation of feed, a lot of isolated ponding and scouring of paddocks," he said.
"For those against the river some people have been absolutely hammered."
Notably those along Ashburton Staveley Rd, commonly known as Greenstreet.
"The Greenstreet area is a disaster zone," he said.
"The north branch (of the Ashburton River) broke out to the south, and the south branch broke out to the north.
"There are some farms there that have been hit on both sides of them.
"It could be suggested the breakout of the north and south branch into Greenstreet is what saved it from flooding Ashburton.
"The flow recorder on (State) Highway 1 actually dropped on Sunday evening which was about the time that the north bank burst out into Greenstreet. That, largely, is what saved pressure on the town," he said.
There were still active river flows on those farms.
There were also complete sections of river berms (including flood protection trees, shingle, boulders) completely blown out on farms — in one case around 1km of berm had been washed on to farmland.
Farms had riverlets gouged through them, fences blown out, pumps washed away and dams burst.
"The impact on those guys is horrendous."
In other areas such as either side of the Hinds River there was ponding and flooding, especially on some arable farms.
In the Mt Somers/Staveley/Foothills area there was damage to bridges, culverts, gateways and farm tracks and stock water supply and fencing.
"There is sign of damage on some of those farms and in some cases quite a lot of winter feed being washed away."
There has also been some major damage on some individual farms in the Winchmore area, where the stopbanks protecting Ashburton overtopped and damaged farms in that area.
"Fortunately for Ashburton the town stopbank’s secondary bank collected flood flow and put it back in the river."
While the event was really well forecast, it turned out the rainfall was significantly exceeded.
"Those forecasts gave farmers a chance to prepare . . . stock was moved to higher ground," Mr Clark said.
"But because it exceeded the forecast, high ground wasn’t high enough."
From Friday to Monday morning, 545mm of rain was recorded at Mt Somers in the Canterbury high country, MetService reported.
The main centres — Christchurch (110mm), Ashburton (155mm), and Timaru (105mm) — were inundated.
The unexpected breaches of river berms and stopbanks resulted in some flood flows outflanking stock. There were isolated losses, but across the whole district they were very low, he said.
