South Island regions brace for drought

Farmers in drought-prone regions on the east coast of the South Island are starting to worry about prolonged dry conditions affecting areas that usually have reliable rainfall.

Even West Otago, which normally gets regular rain, experienced 30C temperatures last week, and farmers said the subsoil was drying out and grass and vegetation starting to shrivel.

Farmers said it had been weeks since the last substantial rainfall.

The Otago Regional Council has warned that the region faces a drought after seven months of low rainfall.

The pattern is common to many other agricultural regions, raising fears that some farmers now face their third drought in seven years.

Drought preparations are already under way at the top of the South Island, with conditions in inland areas of Nelson and Marlborough more typical of the end of a dry summer.

"South Island river flows were the lowest on record for November in much of Marlborough and Nelson, and in parts of Canterbury and Otago," National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) hydrologist Charles Pearson said.

A Niwa climatologist, Alan Porteous, said parts of the South Island need as much as 100mm of rain to bring surface water levels back to normal. And Pearson warned pressure on irrigation systems was likely to continue with generally dry conditions for all the South Island over the next three months.

Some of the nation's most important wine and sheep-farming regions are in the gun: climate scientists say the rain expected to fall over summer may not be enough to replenish groundwater and soil moisture for Marlborough's vineyards.

- NZPA