How any time the media or friends start hammering on about something – it’s the opposite that usually happens? Back in 2004 a few spots of the country were getting mildly dry. That caught the media’s attention and they started. A drought was on the way! Just another week of no rain and we’d all be in desperate straits! NZ was about to dry up and either burn down or blow away! And so on and so on. We didn’t do any of that. What happened was that it started to rain – and rain – and rain. And the next thing was the media were all out in oilskins knee-deep in water and reporting the floods.
So when my friend had her hay paddock cut for baleage the other day and said to me that all they needed now was some good rain to bring the grass on…I winced. We’d had a reasonable month of precipitation to date. 107ml by my rain gauge. A nice balance between last year’s 83ml for October and 2001’s 118 ml for October. And sure enough, it started raining and kept raining, a steady mix of drizzle and brief heavy showers. I think that it may have stopped as of this morning, but the amount we got has been sufficient to bring the month’s total up to a rather high 163mls, or 6 and a half inches. With over 2 inches of that (56ml) falling over the past five days since the paddock was cut. Not quite enough for floods – so long as no one else stands around suggesting that we could do with more rain.
But it makes me wonder if it wouldn’t work to pay the media to mutter darkly about droughts any time we actually need rain…
Have you noticed?
29 October 2011
How any time the media or friends start hammering on about something – it’s the opposite that usually happens? Back in 2004 a few spots of the country were getting mildly dry. That caught the media’s attention and they started. A drought was on the way! Just another week of no rain and we’d all be in desperate straits! NZ was about to dry up and either burn down or blow away! And so on and so on. We didn’t do any of that. What happened was that it started to rain – and rain – and rain. And the next thing was the media were all out in oilskins knee-deep in water and reporting the floods.
So when my friend had her hay paddock cut for baleage the other day and said to me that all they needed now was some good rain to bring the grass on…I winced. We’d had a reasonable month of precipitation to date. 107ml by my rain gauge. A nice balance between last year’s 83ml for October and 2001’s 118 ml for October. And sure enough, it started raining and kept raining, a steady mix of drizzle and brief heavy showers. I think that it may have stopped as of this morning, but the amount we got has been sufficient to bring the month’s total up to a rather high 163mls, or 6 and a half inches. With over 2 inches of that (56ml) falling over the past five days since the paddock was cut. Not quite enough for floods – so long as no one else stands around suggesting that we could do with more rain.
But it makes me wonder if it wouldn’t work to pay the media to mutter darkly about droughts any time we actually need rain…