Rain

It rained today. How obsessed with rainfall am I that a downpour is worthy of a remark in a blog! We've been keeping tabs on the rainfall here since we built our house in 1993. Every time it rains we note the amount on a sheet drawn up on the computer by the BATH. So we now have annual rainfall figures for the last 16 years. What this shows us is that the average annual rainfall for the last 100 years (officially about 630mm) has changed significantly over the last 13 years. Over the last 13 years it has averaged about 380mm (about 15 inches for all you Yanks!) and this has turned us all into a household of rainwatchers. Even my kids know how to look up the rain radar on the Bureau of Meterology's website! "Mum its starting to rain, what does BOM say?" Well I have concluded that what BOM is showing us is a forcefield around the particular town where I live. We regularly watch promising bands of showers heading our way disperse and disappear. Enormous thunderstorms with lots of yellow patches (indicating heavy rain) dodge our town and rain on the next town. The radar will show a blue patch centred on our town but when I look out the window there is nothing happening. Today in the car on the way home from visiting relatives my eldest said "what if we got all the rain in the world for one day to rain on Australia would that break the drought?" Possibly I thought - but it probably still wouldn't rain where we live!