Australian rains raise hopes for drought end
Date: 26-Nov-02
Country: AUSTRALIA
South Australia and southwestern Victoria, hit by Australia's winter drought but not nearly as badly as the northern states of New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland, received widespread weekend falls of around five to 10 millimetres (quarter-to half-inch).
Climatologist Blair Trewin of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology held out hope yesterday that enough summer rain would fall to get a sorghum crop into the ground, as the El Nino weather effect begins to loosen its grip.
"You've got reasonable moisture levels in the atmosphere right through eastern Australia now," he said. "It's really a matter of having some sort of system to trigger them off."
Immediate forecasts were for nothing of consequence over local thundertsorm activity.
"But we're starting to see signs of increased moisture buildup, so there's a bit more moisture there for any system to work with," he said.
The system that brought the weekend falls still had the potential to head north, but would probably not make it into driest cropping areas in central western and north western NSW, and in Queensland, he said.
SIX CRUCIAL WEEKS
Australian farmers say the next six weeks will be critical for a summer sorghum crop.
Australia's premier crop, winter wheat, is beyond redemption, with production from harvest now getting underway slashed to around 10 million tonnes from last year's 24 million tonnes.
This will cut Australia's milling wheat exports sharply, has sent domestic grains prices soaring and has left supplies of domestic stockfeed very tight.
There was still enough local grain for domestic supplies, but supplies were tight, Grain Council of Australia president Keith Perrett said.
Prices are nearly prohibitive, traders say.
But there is still a six-week planting window for a summer sorghum crop, which is used for animal feed. A successful sorghum planting would take the heat out of Australian grains markets, through inter-linkages between wheat, sorghum, barley and corn prices.
The weather bureau's Trewin holds out some hope for timely rain.
"The chances of normal or above rainfall are not too different from 50:50. So the odds aren't much different from a normal year," he said.
"The link between El Nino and drought is very much a winter-spring thing," he said.