Well, the tanks are full!

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The slipstream of cyclone wassname brought a little rain.

Found ourselves under two inches of water.

No, not a lot by recent standards around Australia but still a novelty when you live on top of a hill.

But the tanks are full.
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Wet. Well, wet-ish.

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You have to admire the irony of it: I put in 4 water tanks and we have the wettest winter in 10 years.

The media has made a great run on it. The drought has broken!

The state government, with an election in November, has made a great run on it and eased water restrictions. Mind you, they are being very quiet about the desalination plant they are building.

But how about a few other facts:

1. The dams are only 42% full. Better than last yet to be sure but they haven't been 100% full since 1997.

2. Best winter rains in 10 years but in the last 155 years this winter rates as only the 60th wettest.

3. And, looking at the year to date, there were 115 out of 155 years that were wetter at the end of winter.

4. Having trained people to be careful with water, what message is being sent by easing restrictions?

5. The price of water has gone up 25% a year for the last two years. Could be some hefty bills in store for people who go 'open slather' with their water.

But my tanks are full and the garden is wet. That can't be a bad thing.

Oh, and it took 11 tries to get that photo.

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Miraculous shade of green.

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Raspberries and climbing beans.

Last weekend I put up a 3.6m x 6m shade cloth over the vegetables.

That's 12ft x 18ft for those still with Imperial connections.

But I needed the shade, plants were getting burnt. And when I watered the soil was dusty, even though I had watered it the previous evening. And it's not even summer here yet.

Since I put up the shade cloth, we have had drizzle, showers and even the occasional rain.

Wish I had done it earlier.

Mind you, after all this rain, the garden is just dusty if you turn it over with a spade. So the rain has only soaked down about 200mm (8") so far. But it is still welcome.

And, hopefully, the shade will keep some of the water in a little longer.

Fingers crossed.

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The sky's falling! The sky's falling!

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There's water falling from the sky!

Now that blue band is travelling west to east and there is not much beyond it to the west but, hey, it is something!
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It's raining! OK, it's not pouring but it is raining!

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OK, so it is not much and will pass over us in about 20min (the weather moves past left to right) but at least the place has that lovely rain smell.

Now, I'm off to bed with the hope we will get more over night.

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The blue things are rain storms!

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What blue things? (I hear you cry). Well, yes, my point exactly. Green, yellow, orange and red would be welcome too.

Less than 3mm so far for February and less than 4mm for the year. We are talking summer temperatures here. Friday is forecast to reach 38°C with winds. Bush fire weather again.

We woke early this morning to do our permitted hand-watering to find the ground wet!

But only a little drizzle.

Not only did it not register in the rain gauge, the cobwebs stopped most of it reaching the bottom of the gauge. If you look closely you can see it.

My own private rain catchment!


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First of the year. Possibly the only one.

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Sitting in bed, drinking coffee, doing The Age crossword, listening to light rain on the roof.

Happiness.

The new year off to a flying start.

Can it get any better than this?

Well, yes. The light rain could ratchet up to heavy rain for a while. Not a lot of chance of that, though.

But I got the crossword out. First time for a long time.

Perhaps I should stop while I'm ahead.
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I still don't care what you say...

(Click to enlarge)

In a previous post, Tom took at shot at me about my concerns about climate change.

Is it real, or is it natural variation?

Well, the above graph displays Melbourne's rainfall against its expected average for 2008.

So far this month, two thirds through, we have received 9.0 mm (expected average = 66.5 mm).
Not looking good for October, Tom.

You can see that we have had eight months below average and only one above this year. If you say that you can reasonably expect half the readings to be above average and half to be below, then there is a binomial probability of 1.8% of this occuring.

But it you go back to the start of the century, there have been only 27 months with above average rainfall. That's out of 105 months. The probability of this occurring is less than 0.00005%

If it was a coin toss competition you would be starting to suspect foul play.
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Carrying on like a wet hen.

No, not autum leaves, rain!

In the last two days we have had 10mm here. Not much maybe, the January average is 47mm, but a darned sight better than things were a few days ago.

Things have been pretty grim, water-wise, the last six months and the garden is showing the strain. I have a system in place for collecting shower water, a separate system for collecting rain water (but, of course, that needs rain) and a third system that catches the washing machine water from the laundry, having recently switched to a garden friendly powder. The shower water goes on the flower garden, the laundry water on the vegetables and the rain water goes wherever needed.

Watch this spot for reports of 'bucket back'.

But yesterday and today we got rain. So what was I doing? Bucketing water out of the collection systems onto the garden. How deep down will 10mm of rain go? Probably about 30mm, allowing for interstitial spaces in the soil. Not far really. So bucketing on top of the rain should get water deeper into the garden. Then it is up to the mulch to keep it there.

But they predict storms with up to 50mm tonight! Well, I would prefer ten nights of 5mm but let's wait and see what we get.

After all, the weather bureau is a non-prophet organisation.
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