A Bit Dry

31mm of rain for December is a miserable figure, less than half  that of the lowest of other years since 2008. My friend Glen keeps these records and he sent me them with his New Year best wishes on Jan 1.

Total rainfall for 2015 was 783 mm, also the lowest since 2008 which is as far as my figures from Glen go back, and well down on our annual average for the last 100 years which is I think about 1150mm.

All that rain in December must have come the night after Christmas Day, as there was about 34mm in our gauge in the morning and some of our guests were up early packing up their tents as water was just starting to come through as dawn broke. Glen recorded just the 31.33mm for December - my gauge which is not good for precise reading showed 32-34mm.

Since then, for January, while Sydney and much of NSW was being dumped on, and indeed many parts of Victoria, we had the princely sum of 5mm of drizzle one day, just enough to wet my shirt through while I was picking beech for a customer one day and make me cranky.

I helped my friend Leanne with her bees last week. We chose Thursday as it was the best day for both of us. It was mild and intermittently overcast with a crisp breeze tending south. They were as savage as hell. There was some messmate flowering and with the changeable weather, and wildly varying temperatures from one day to the next, it was the perfect recipe for savage. I had a veil with holes in it at the top and the bees got in and belted my face as well as the hands and up my sleeves.

But we got the honey off not that there was much, way too dry for any honey to speak of from blackberries or clover and cold miserable weather in late October scotched any chance of a flow on the silvertop which did flower well but did not yield. In the burst of hot weather in October I put some foundation frames in the hives to stop them swarming and they drew them out and and put brood in them. Leanne was happy to get some honey anyway and it is a task behind me now. I doubt there'll be honey later so dry it is and the weather so erratic.

I guess the next thing could well be a deluge and flooding, which is what happened after the last El Ninio cycle, but that has occurred elsewhere already.