Two days ago I wrote about the rain we were receiving. We have been in drought conditions here in South Australia for some time with little good rainfall for over eighteen months. Coupled with a long, hot summer the situation was getting serious. We were on quite severe water restrictions with the promise of further bans in coming weeks.
Since Thursday, however, it has hardly stopped raining. In the last 60 hours we have had about 85mm. Now this may seem not a great deal of rain compared to some parts of the world, but considering our annual average is only 344mm, this rain represents almost 25% of our annual precipitation. It was very steady rain meaning there was very little runoff; it was the long steady rainfall we had been praying for. More is forecast for the coming week.
More rain is needed:
We still have a long way to go before water restrictions can be lifted, however. It will take much more rain over a long period of time to replenish our depleted reservoirs. Even more rain is desperately needed in the Murray-Darling catchment basin in the eastern parts of Australia. This river system waters vast areas of food producing farmlands and orchards. Good rain over several years will be needed to bring the river system back into balance again.
Birds and the rain:
The rain was quite heavy for most of today. I didn’t hear any birds calling until the rain stopped at about 5pm. In fact, I didn’t even see any birds for most of the day. As soon as the rain stopped, the birds started calling again. The Little Ravens were the first to call, followed closely by the Magpie Larks, New Holland Honeyeaters and the Pardalotes. No birds came to visit the bird baths today. I wonder why?
