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Serious northern rainfall to finish 2015
04 January 2016
Rainfall across northern Australia in December 2015 meant the year finished on a relatively positive note. Virtually all of the NT and Far North Queensland received ‘above average’ to the ‘highest on record’ for December.
Most of central Queensland and NSW also had decent precipitation for December, with ‘average’ volumes recorded for many regions during one of the peak months.
Southern Australia’s east and west coast rainfall were in stark contrast to one another, with large swathes of the east registering ‘below average’, while the west was generally ‘above average’.
If the latest Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) three month rainfall outlook is to come to fruition, the December pattern will largely be repeated in January – going a long way to assisting the northern drought deficit regions, but for the south-east, the hot and dry conditions are forecast to continue.
This will also make cattle and lamb offerings during January particularly interesting to monitor, especially considering the contrasting northern and southern rain developments potentially presenting opportunities for restockers and processors further north.
