A week ago the territory's soil was at its driest since 2003, the year of Canberra's most catastrophic bushfires.

Andrew Stark, chief officer at the ACT Rural Fire Service, said that before this week's rainfall, the territory was approaching a situation ''where we were going to set all-time records for soil dryness in the ACT''.

''From an environmental view, these are drought conditions,'' Mr Stark said on Wednesday, before the downpour that drenched the city for the third time in a week.

Last week, the ACT needed 132 millimetres of rain to saturate the soil.

The only time the figure has been higher was in 2003, when 148 millimetres was needed.

The fire service uses the Keetch-Byram Drought Index to measure how much rainfall the top layers of soil need to become saturated.

The system uses a scale of zero to 200 and Mr Stark said that in an average Canberra summer 50 millimetres of rain was needed to drench the soil.

Mr Stark said dryness had spread throughout the ACT.

''Without the rain we had on the weekend we would have reached an all-time high for soil dryness in the ACT,'' he said.

He said any figure higher than 100 on the scale meant problems for bushfire management as it led to more spot fires and potential for fires to become ''far more dangerous''.

Mr Stark said almost non-stop rain on Saturday, and more showers on Sunday, had not even set the territory back to average conditions for this time of year.

''If we'd been average, the rain event on Saturday and Sunday would have set us back to zero,'' he said.

''We'd have had a saturated bushland and grass environment which would have given us some vigour and growth going into autumn.''

Mr Stark said that, in terms of bushfire management, it would have meant the system was quite healthy.

''That rain event hasn't even reduced us to average conditions,'' he said.

''If that's the rainfall event before we go into winter it means we will start the next summer season with very dry conditions.

''We'd be expecting to go into next summer far exceeding the average.''

On Wednesday the ACT government announced a review of its bushfire management strategy.

The government wants to improve plans to protect vulnerable people during bushfires and to manage vegetation in urban areas.