It finally rained yesterday and it's still raining right now. Too bad we don't have traditional tin roof, otherwise it would be a piece of music by itself...
This is the first decent rain since we arrived in Australia around 40 days ago. By decent I mean the ground actually gets wet. There were a couple of occasions the "rain" lasted for such a short time it mostly felt like somebody up there sneezed.
Obviously this is an overdue rainfall. I read somewhere in newspaper that this past Sept. is record dry for a long time, and that is after a very dry 2006.
Even though Australians are not unfamiliar with drought, the current situation is "unprecedented". Last year the Murray River (of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australian's food bowl) received its lowest inflow on record: just 1211 gigaliters (GL), far below the long-term average of 11,200 GL, and nearly one quarter of the 4200GL that irrigators are licensed to take, according to the Australian (Oct 13-14).
This severe cutback in irrigation water is affecting agriculture and will continue to do so unless we have more rainfall like today's. 48% of normal allocation will keep vegetable and fruit alive, simply alive, not produce anything, and we don't have that much yet. No wonder the price of produce in the OZ supermarket are much higher then that in an US market...
(To be continued)
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