There's gunna be a windfarm in my neighbourhood

[old man emu]

I won't believed that it has rained until I see it in the rain guage. Also the BOM's definitin of rain is any drops falling from the sky. My definition is the creek rising.

[facthunter]

If it rained from "Now till Xmas", you would have a few problems. Nev

[nomadpete]

13 hours ago, old man emu said:

I won't believed that it has rained until I see it in the rain guage.

OME, It's time you scraped the cobwebs out of the rain gauge.

Otherwise those rare drips won't make it to the bottom.

[facthunter]

When your garden's Cactus it will be OK. Nev

[old man emu]

You know it's dry when the weeds are dying. 

 

I know that Rain, Rain, go away is Top of the Pops down south, but I won't be singing it.

[pmccarthy]

We are hoping for rain on Sunday. All is very dry, still watering the garden. 

[onetrack]

We had the tip of a cold front come through the State today, it was a real fizzer. The forecast was up to 6mm in Perth, but we only got a light shower, barely enough to wet the ground. The cold front dissipated rapidly into just low clouds, and only a few coastal areas got a couple of millimetres. A bit disappointing, and there's no sign of any decent cold front, for close on another fortnight.

 

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/JAWF_Monitoring/Australia/GFS_forecasts.shtml

[facthunter]

The Biggest HIGH That I've ever registered on my Barometer is over New Zealand right now. 1041 mbs. These days, forecasts 2 weeks away are stretching it. Air Mass analysis is what's needed. Lots of water can only come from tropical maritime air.  You will never get much rain from way down south and the Polar regions are as dry as deserts.. Air masses are Modified by what they Pass over.  Nev

[onetrack]

OME is gonna be drookit on Monday and Tuesday, nothing surer.

 

https://www.bom.gov.au/places/nsw/gilgandra/forecast/

[facthunter]

Yes there's funny things happening in a couple of Places .  It's hard to Predict the  Amount of rain. from the Information I have.  1 inch won't do much. Nev

[onetrack]

A large, moisture-laden air mass is feeding into a trough in front of a huge high pressure system, over Western Qld and Northern NSW. As you say, any decent amount of rain originates from the Northern maritime region latitudes.

This tropical air mass is feeding in from the Northern section of the Indian Ocean, and it's bound to carry some reasonable amount of rain to SW Qld and Northern NSW. 

 

When the Bureau say there's a "100% certainty" of rain, they're not often wrong. Only the total amount of rainfall is in doubt, and that can vary widely over a relatively small area. 

I thought the weak cold front that came through W.A. on Thursday morning had nothing behind it. But the tip of another cold front followed it, and we got 8mm of rain in the City on Thursday night. However, the rain didn't penetrate very far inland.

 

http://satview.bom.gov.au/

 

Edited Saturday at 08:46 AM by onetrack

[onetrack]

So ... OME, did you get that drought-breaking rain? I see where Coonabrabran got 43mm, Dubbo got 30mm, and Nyngan got 50mm, so you must have had a decent downpour, at the very least?

[old man emu]

Overnight on Sunday we got about 3mm, but then the rains started during the day and kept up into the evening. I don't have a guage, so I can't say how much we got, but whenyou look at data from around about, it would seem that 30 - 45 mm was common. There wasn't enough rain to create running flows, but at least the topsoil is wet. It is too late around here to plant Canola and teh sub-soil moisture might not be enough for cereal crops. With the price of diesel and fertilizer, it is going to be a gamble if anyone does crop this year. One thing you have to remember is that, while you might get a good healthy growth of wheat plants, it takes a lot of water for those plants to fill seeds, which is how you get the tonnages you want from a crop.

[facthunter]

To grow wheat, you Need Moisture deep in the soil. Growers Pick the years they sow. You don't want rain Late in the cycle. ALL Farmers are gamblers.  Nev

[willedoo]

I grew up on a wheat farm but certainly wouldn't like to be doing it these days. Dryland cropping was always a gamble with nature, but a lot more so these days with high input costs. A mate of mine recently sold his farm and retired to town. It was only a small place, 700 acres of cultivation, and he would plant the whole place to barley if he got a favourable season, and no summer crop at all. He was more of an opportunity farmer. Both he and his wife worked off farm and they would plant the whole block out if they got the rain, or if not, just rely on their off farm job income. Sometimes they would go two or three years without a crop in dry times. Back when we were kids, that block supported a family of four kids but you'd need two or three times that acerage to do it now. Most farms in that district have all been amalgamated into bigger holdings now. They were all just separate soldier settler blocks when I was there.