One of Victoria's largest dams has begun spilling for the first time in 26 years.
Thomson Dam in West Gippsland, about a two-and-a-half hour drive from the city, is Melbourne Water's biggest dam, holding half the city's supply.
The dam level has been creeping closer to 100 per cent for weeks and wind has at times pushed water over the spillway, before it officially started spilling.
Melbourne Water said water had reached the dam's spillway.
"Spillways are designed to safely transfer excess water during extreme weather events or during prolonged periods of rainfall that cause a reservoir to fill," Melbourne Water said in a statement.
"Given recent high rainfall in the Thomson catchment, Melbourne Water has been carefully managing storage levels through controlled releases from the Thomson Reservoir to the Thomson River down to the Gippsland Lakes, to maintain a safe operating range of our storages."
It said residents and businesses downstream may notice high and faster flows than normal.
The dam last spilled in 1996.
Tourist attraction
Latrobe Valley resident Angela van Eyk heard the dam was close to spilling and decided to see it for herself.
"I haven't seen that happen anytime we've come up here before, it's been quite low," she said.
"Given that we've just had so many drought years, and now we're having the opposite, we thought we'd come up and see it.
"We brought our mother-in-law who's in a nursing home, she loves doing this sort of thing and we were lucky enough to be here as it spilled over.
She remembers the slipway being built but had never seen a spill there before.
"It's just one of those lifetime moments when you just happen to be in the right place at the right time," she said.
"It looks like an inland sea, there's whitecaps and everything."
