<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/16/south-australia-historic-dry-weather-parched-waterways-dead-fish-and-trees-ready-to-give-up>
"Usually hardy trees and shrubs are dying, waterways have turned to dust and
ecologists fear local freshwater fish extinctions could be coming as historic
dry conditions grip parts of South Australia.
Large swathes of the state – including the Adelaide Plains, the Fleurieu, Yorke
and Eyre peninsulas and upper south-east – have seen the lowest rainfall on
record in the 14 months since February 2024, according to the Bureau of
Meteorology.
“The one thing we need more than anything else is rain,” the state premier,
Peter Malinauskas, said last week.
Off the back of the state’s driest summer since 2018-19, this year weather
stations across Adelaide, Mount Barker and Mount Lofty have recorded just 20%
of their usual rain.
Adelaide typically gets 64mm from January to March, but this year only 14mm
fell. Mount Barker, 33km to the city’s south-east, saw only 15mm compared to
its average 83mm.
Angus Hines, a senior meteorologist at the BoM, says even though several
weather patterns over recent months dragged moisture over the continent from
the north-east, “by the time that airflow reaches South Australia, it’s more or
less bone dry”.
Adelaide’s desalination plant has at times been running at capacity, pumping
out 300 million litres of drinking water a day to keep the city’s residents off
water restrictions."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
