El Nino Blow

That's the headline on today's The Weekly Times. In smaller print is 'Farmers Brace for Continuing Drought'.

Two weeks ago I took out a year's subscription, mainly to get the inducement offer of 'The Cook's Book' which is a ripper. I was so pleased to see an article in the first weeks subscription, stating that Japanese scientists were predicting a wetter than average winter and spring for Victoria, that I cut it out and took it to the farm where Meredith stuck it on the fridge. In the next week we had 50ml of rain and farmers in the wheat growing areas had the same or more and all was optimism.

Now, Professor Yamagata says the readings now say the El Nino will kill the rain inducing Indian Ocean Dipole event which was previously forecast. Talk about being set up to be shot down. With Melbourne's reservoirs showing 25.8 full, that's more than 3% lower than the lowest figure last year, and still going down, the prospect of a dry winter and spring is a hideous one, for city dwellers, small business and farmers alike.