Heavy rains bring both relief and new dangers to bushfire-hit Australia
10 February, 2020
A four-day downpour across Australia's east coast has taken relief after months of devastating bushfires and years of drought, but also widespread storm damage and forecasts of more wild weather to come.
The weekend drenching represented the largest sustained run of rainfall in Sydney and surrounding areas for 30 years, dousing some bushfires and replenishing depleted dams across New South Wales, the country's most populous state.
Some rural areas received more rain in recent days than that they had in the entirety of days gone by year - a startling and swift turnaround from the bushfires which have killed 33 persons and ravaged large parts of the east coast.
"It's amazing what the smell of the rain can do to people's spirits," Ben Shields, the mayor of the inland city of Dubbo, told Reuters on the phone.
Like many other rural towns, Dubbo has been beset by duststorms and put through water restrictions on the trunk of a three-year drought.
James Jackson, a sheep and cattle farmer in the drought-hit Guyra district some 500 kilometers north of Sydney, told Reuters the spot was needs to turn green again.
"This one event won't replenish the whole soil moisture profile. We'll need a handful of these, but this is certainly a good start for those people who first got it," said Jackson, who is also the president of industry body NSW Farmers.
"I've two-year-old sheep who are seeing green grass for the very first time."
Bushfire indicators were almost swamped by floods in a number of areas as the weekend rainfall cut capacity to tens of thousands of homes, caused travel chaos in Sydney and closed scores of schools for the beginning of the week.
Almost 400 millimeters of rain fell in the Sydney area and surrounding areas. The Warragamba Dam, which supplies about four-fifths of Sydney's water, jumped from about 40% to above 60% full in only over weekly, the state's water authority said, shoring up water supplies for the town of 5 million.
The NSW Rural Fire Service's Sydney headquarters has been reconfigured to react to floods and storm damage as a result of the rapid shift in the elements threat.
Elements of northern and inland NSW, along with southern Queensland, have been around in drought since 2016, severely reducing river and dam levels while also creating the tinder-dry conditions which may have fuelled this season's deadly bushfires.
The weekend rain extinguished a number of the worst bushfires in NSW, including the Gospers Mountain megafire in the Blue Mountains and the Currawon blaze on the south coast. Each burned for months, together razing a lot more than 1 million hectares of bushland and destroying hundreds of homes.
On the other hand, flood evacuation warnings have been ordered for parts of the Conjola region, authorities said, where deadly fires razed a large number of homes on New Year's Eve. Thunderstorms are forecast for NSW and neighboring Victoria state in coming days.
The rain has put some much-needed moisture into parched land months right out of the all-important wheat-planting season which is essential to the fortunes of Australia's biggest crop.
Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank, said the rain would also inspire farmers in the north-east state of Queensland to rebuild their stock numbers now that they had water and feed.
"A few of the driest elements of Queensland have received a drenching, which can only help pasture growth," Ziebell said.
Source: japantoday.com
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