Has the drought across southern Australia finally broken?
According to ABC Rural Weather: “cloud is crossing western Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania with a trough, generating widespread rain. Low cloud is driven across southern South Australia by cool southwesterly winds, bringing showers. Thick cloud is forming over the north near a monsoon trough, triggering heavy showers and storms.”
News Limited is reporting: “A one in 50 year monsoonal downpour dumping record rain across much of South Australia has cut off towns, stranded motorists, flooded businesses and brought smiles of joy to drought-stricken pastoralists.”
ABC Online is also reporting flooding in South Australia and heavy rain in western Victoria.
While last week national parks across central Australia received flooding rains with even the normally dry Trephina Creek to the east of Alice Springs running.
Western New South Wales may even get some good rain?
So has the drought finally broken?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Maybe and let’s hope so.
But get the numbers in the gauge further east first ! (including SEQ dam catchments)
And rain does not equal instant cash flow. Years to recover financially. Often forgotten by the media.
For southern Australia too early to say. This is a tropical burst. Have to wait a few months for the winter rainfall pattern to come in. Where it has rained, it will establish a bank of soil moisture and run off – a good start.
But SW Australia, from Western EP to WA, (with the exception of a line north through Esperence recently) have largely missed this latest lot.
Not until Wivenhoe and Sommerset are nearly full!
I didn’t know south eastern Queensland qualified as southern Australia?
Depends where you’re standing ma’am!!
Errrr, what drought? I thought the sceptics looked at the evidence and discovered there wasn’t one.
Pinxi,
Most so-called sceptics have acknowledged there is a drought but considered it within the range of natural variability i.e. not unprecedent and not necessarily the result of a climate crisis/climate change.
If it’s normal then the farmers and irrigators would have planned for it sufficiently. We’ll look back at it as the winge free drought that Australia had to have.
The current philosophy of Exceptional Circumstances Assistance by the Federal Government says landholders should risk manage most of the time – but a few times per century (just a few) there will be droughts long and severe enough to test the resources of “reasonable” management. For these droughts some assistance will be provided. Other unusual combinations including wet harvests, mouse plagues and frost have also seen successful applications.
I’m not necessarily supporting nor unsupporting this position. An interesting position for Treasury though if you have three 1 in 100 payouts in 10-15 years – be getting nervous I’d think. Bad luck or climate change altering your bookies baseline??
The other issue is that once you get into a long drought it takes a fair bit to get out droughtedness(usually). So this means on a 5% percentile declaration you could end up declared 23% of the century (considering median rainfall to trigger revocation).
Jen,
surely it is time for you to just ignore pinxi? The comment sums her up, nobody disputes the drought in southern australia….just the severity of it. My sister would call her an intellectual bully. I am not sure why you bother to respond to somebody who is so rude to you/ about you. She does not deserve a bite from you….you should be above that!
It speaks highly of you that you have not banned her from your site.
Thanks for clarifying toby, I get it now. I got so convinced by the propoganda I thought there wasn’t a drought at all, it was all caused by guvmint water mismanagement and insufficient logging and the CSIRO wouldn’t know because they’re idiots. Several droughts of the century in a short space though… how to respond?
Funny I thought the propoganda was not that there is not a drought…..rather its exageration as a 1 in 1000 or 1 in 100 or 1 in?
But surely you would agree the governments have ALL been mishandling water management…..
With a growing population it is surely obvious that more water is required..which requires management and infrastructure. That D word springs to mind. My water tank is overflowing at last…so much so that if only i had another 1 or 2 to fill, i would probably never have to worry about how deep i run a bath or how long i have a shower. Do you think if we had a few more half full dams that might mean more water!?
Toby – obviously droughts have a spatial extent and everywhere is not droughted. If you look through recent climate archives you will clearly show areas – including Murray River headwaters that are worst on record for rainfall on a one year, 5 year and seven year decile basis. The Murray inflows are among the lowest on records and flows into SE Qld catchments – Lake Wivenhoe and Lake Somerset are the lowest on record.
Regardless of anything we have been in an exceptional drought conditions for many parts of Australia. Some areas have had respite in recent days – but not everywhere.
The climate change aspects to all this (or not) have also been discussed at length in recent posts.
Luke, I know this has been discussed…thats why I know Pinxi was just baiting Jen….yet again…and i wonder why she responds. Lets hope it has finally broken eh!
Jennifer,
I don’t get this. Only a few weeks ago you were telling us there was no drought. It was all a beat up by errant scientists and environmentalists. You even wrote an Online Opinion piece about it.
I’m so confused.
Steve,
I assume the opinion piece you are referring to is one entitled ‘Windmills are not a solution to this drought’ published by OLO on 27th October last year? Is this the link: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5076 ?
I begin the piece “Is the current drought…”.
I don’t think you are confused.
Jennifer, I think one of the most interesting aspects from a communication point of view is how long will the rarity of these events be referenced to a climate now gone. Lets move on. Sure, this was a one in 50 on the old climate record, and sure too we dont know what it would convert to on the new climate record. But why not use more informative and accurate ( and totally unchallengeable) words like ‘based on our climate history this was a rare 1 in 50 year event, but given climate change, the frequency of such events is likely to have changed.’ A related point is that it is bad logic to say it is in the range of natural variation, implying that therefore it is just another dose of the old NV!