Some people I respect - farmers - are telling me we're heading into a drought affecting the whole of NSW west of the Divide. Don't know about the other states. I can see it already on my little place.

This is going to cause big hardship in the bush, if it happens, and the effect will spill over into city life too. Agriculture has displaced mining now (once again) as the big earner.

So don't think it doesn't matter to you. It will.

As the surface  becomes too hostile for human civilisation, then we should evolve into mole people.
Move underground and live on fungus.


And as for food prices skyrocketing due to burning coal, nationalise food and keep it all in Australia. No exporting.

The Egyptians believed that their rulers and how they ruled affected the weather.

When there was drought, they simply killed the ruler and things got better.

The Romans believed that when there was political unrest or rulers fighting, storms came.

Even many primitive tribes believed that the kings and rulers caused the weather.

Now.
Im not saying this is fact,
But, the whole time howard was in power there was drought.
This could be because he was a dried up little turd that was killing the country.
Along came Rudd, and we had all sorts of inclement weather
This could be because he was useless.

Now we have massive storms and tornados in the USA
Could this be because of Trump???

Is this starting to ring true?

Australia has had some of the most changable, confused and weird weather lately.
Could our ever changing and confused prime minister is in charge??

Just saying.
Its a real Quinkydik isnt it?

It's been raining almost every day for months in Melbourne.

around me, i have seen 100's and 1000's of acres of prime agricultural land turned into urban sprawl.
the interesting thing is that a lot of this is 2 1/2 to 5 acre lots and people put a horse or two on it .

when the dry comes (as it has now), farmers keep the best lucerne for their own stock, there is little available on the market.  and a lot of the best hay producing land is being subdivided.

add to that , 3 local hay producers i know are in their 70's and you see the cost for a bale go from 9 to 25 dollars very quickly.

and then, most people cant get hay, even if they would pay more. it simply runs out.

so i face an almost daily phone call asking for a spot on my prime river front property for some dopey buggers horse that is now living on dirt and twigs.

i cant take them all.
many end up at the local meatworks en route to belgium.

anyway, this drought doesnt look like finishing anytime soon.

theres a lot more suffering ahead.

god only knows what its like west of the great divide

Sprintcyclist wrote on Sep 12^th, 2017 at 7:59am:



sprint, there are a couple of reasons abbatoirs are closing.
high energy costs and refirdgeration costs
and when there is a drought on, farmers know they will get terrible money for stock, so they try to hold on til the end.
paradoxically, if it continues, expect a flood of cheap beef and prices will plummett.

then it will rain and no one will be selling as they will be stocking up  and prices go up.

its a very tricky market

Winter is always dry. When we get some humanity it will start raining again.

Will it be a CO2 induced climate drought or a normal climate drought?

my place after good rain

and what rain does to the river

We did not have these sorts of droughts when Sir Jo Bjelke Petersen was The premier

It's very wet and cold as here in the Yarra Valley (an hour east of Melbourne). We had hail stones yesterday arvo.

It's like a cycle, the decades of weather...I recall in the early 1980's here, how cracked and dry our land was whilst we went through a severe drought.

Now some 35 years later, we are drowning with rain. Mind, some 10 years ago or so, the rains weren't as much as they are now, and we had drier than usual winters. I always use our lake as a measure of that.

Apparently, there is going to be snow predicted tomorrow in the Mt. Dandenong hills (Olinda).

It seems lopsided or reversed, as Queensland and parts of NSW are facing a drought, rather than us Victorians.

Just an observation of how decades change.

Mind, we had some horrific fires during summer in our region, worst in Oz history.
2009 Black Saturday, and 1983 Ash Wednesday.

It's interesting to note some history of civilizations, from hundreds of years ago in other parts of the globe, how lush water filled areas, eventually, suffered from severe droughts, that lasted 3 decades which eventually drove civilization out to find other areas to live in.

The way it seems, weather is not always a predictable constant.
I have even noted, as years go by, how late or early the autumn leaves fall, or how late or early the spring buds form.
Never know how they will react from one year to the next.
There was even a couple of years of no bees recently, which bothered me to the point I went to our local shire to enquire about it, only to be told "It's technology that did it, even the fruit picking season has been shortened from 11 weeks to 5 weeks" etc.
So the new phone towers and whatever else has done this?

I had seen some bees return a little this last summer, but still not as much as usual. Nice to see the little guys are still trying to hang in there.

bogarde73 wrote on Sep 11^th, 2017 at 3:21pm:


With all the moisture in the form of rain and snow being prevalent in the NSW region west of the Divide (or not), I don't think NSW has any reason to worry about a drought.

Qld statewide has had one of the driest, warmest winters in a while. Even last year, Qld had unseasonal rainfall that helped alleviate drought conditions. This winter, Qld in many areas needed to have a good 100mm minimum to avoid guaranteed drought. My town of Rockhampton, 30km from the coast, received 10mm of rainfall in the last 3 months. I am hoping that my town receives an absolute drenching in the next week, just to avoid a dry start to spring. But I think the entire state needs a downpour or two just to keep the state from turning brown.

Drought is here.

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2017 at 6:55pm:


yep, that is the same as here

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2017 at 6:55pm:


Though you were sth coast?

Well since 2011 they've had it pretty good. Heaps of rains (and the farmers still called it drought  ).
Of course it doesn't last for ever - when El Nino/La Nina swap over between OZ and South America.

Good rains on lands mean less upwellings in ocean and poor fishing.
Drought on land, gives great fishing.

Mind you - at least its not a 10,000 year Ice Age drought that scuttled the Aboriginal culture just before the Whiteys turned up.

bogarde73 wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2017 at 7:14am:


More confirmation. The ironbark in my front yard is in blossom. That only happens when it knows there's a big dry.

Contribution from Yadda.....

2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

bogarde73 wrote on Sep 24^th, 2017 at 10:26am:




bogarde,

If i had made a comment like that, someone here woulda piped up;

"Ya      stu pid       religious git!       Trees don't 'know' things like that."

And yet, trees do 'know' such things !
.....all of nature has an innate wisdom, courtesy of its creator!

Yadda wrote on Sep 24^th, 2017 at 11:54am:


With one exception . . .MAN.

And the reason for that is, evolution gave him the intelligence to reason and learn to forget his innate wisdom.

Unsure if we are aliens but agree we are intrusive.

Rather than live in harmony with nature we seek to control it and package it and on sell it.

Absolutely everything we need to live and be happy is given on this planet for free .

But we as a animal race has changed it.

How funny if we actually nothing but a crazy reality TV show for other higher beings too watch several galaxy's away?

Quote:


http://www.seqwater.com.au/water-supply/dam-levels#

says our dams are at 71% capacity

aquascoot wrote on Sep 12^th, 2017 at 7:29am:


Yes, that's whats happening here. I feel sorry for the horses owned by suburban immigrants. They haven't got a clue.

I posted a month or two ago, somewhere, that this is going to be a killer summer.
It is drier here, at this time of year, than I can remember for a decade or more. Temperatures are already recording the hottest Sept yet.

It is still possible for the weather to turn (see SOI) , but if it does we are likely to get some very wet and wild weather.

Drought, or flooding rain.
So it is, and so it shall be.