jmh

The area north of Auckland has officially become a drought. Hard times for farmers:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10868115

I heard on the news the other day that farmers are selling off livestock to see them through. This means cheap meat prices for the consumer in the short term, but price hikes in the longer term. Might be worth stocking up the freezer if you can.

Robbie2010

Don't hold your breath on that one!

jmh

Meat does seem to be cheaper in my local supermarket. Lamb chops about half the price they were at the beginning of the season. Of course you'll get better deals at a butcher shop.

madao

You just can't beat the Mad Butchers meat!

scrubbedexpat094

That'll be Northland then!

jmh

The reason I put it like that was in the report I read they said 'north of the Harbour Bridge'. Confused me a bit that did.

downunderpom

It's spreading - even farmers in the south end of the North Island are now requesting drought status. Looking out of the window I'd agree - that grass is dry as a bone.

I was chainsawing the bottom of some strainer posts yesterday, ready to go in the ground tomorrow - had to make sure I didn't start a fire by the action of a hot blade cutting through very dry and tough posts....

The water level in my stream has been reduced, due to low river levels. Fortunately I'm still getting enough for the horses, cattle beasts and sheep. Our personal water storage is down to about 50%, but I deliberately over-designed the water storage when we designed this place, being of the opinion that you can live without just about anything BUT water. (We're rural, so have to collect and store rain water for our personal use. It's great for lathering up with very little soap / shampoo!!!) People say "You've got a big house..." and I say "Not really. See, we figured out how much water we needed per year, then divided that by the average annual rainfall for this area, and that gave us how much roof we needed to harvest the rainwater. Once we knew how much roof we needed, it was just a case of building some walls under it!"

And they look at me, all big-eyed, and say "Really?!"

Catchafire

Whole of the North Island been declared a drought zone now.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10871403

We had a sprinkler ban in place yesterday in Marlborough. Must be getting serious.

Wondering what the state of the hydro lakes are, no one has talk about that yet.

Robbie2010

"Lake Taupo provides the primary storage for the Waikato Hydro System. The lake is operated within a range of only 1.4m – equivalent to just 1% of it’s total volume."

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct...W-HMMj5DnGYqmw

Clappy

That crossed my mind too.

I was visiting here in July 2001 when the lakes got so low that the country came close to being unable to generate any more electricity. I remember the New Zealanders were all asked to turn off their beer fridges which I thought was adorable.

On that basis it might be a couple more months before people start to think about it unless they have learned a bit from that episode and done something about it in the intervening period.

Genesis

Very bad. It was on the news this week. They are talking of potential 'electricity shortages' due to the very low levels. My, my don't we all take it all for granted?

love30stm

My grass looks dead

GoingIn2011

It's rained in Auckland all day pretty much but has now stopped...

downunderpom

What a difference a week makes - two days of steady rain and my water tanks are full again, the paddocks have had a good soaking, and the amount of water in the stream has doubled. Phew! Back to normal for me!

love30stm

Back to dry and sunny again after the two day downpour