Drought looming after winter stays dry

September rain in 2013, as a stream swells at Maraekakaho, near Hastings. Farmers are hanging out for more rain by mid-September to avert drought.

Northern Hawke's Bay could be headed for a significant drought with rainfall well down on average.

The prospects are highlighted in rainfall statistics for the year, with most of the Hastings and Wairoa districts, and Napier, now well below average.

At MetService's Hawke's Bay Airport recording station north of Napier, the rainfall for the year totals 305.8mm, compared with a January-August average of over 530mm. The Hastings rainfall of just over 350mm compares with an average of about 520mm by mid-August and Mahia has received 494mm, well down on the 860mm average.

A year ago, there had been 398mm at the airport, 461mm in Hastings, and 720mm at Mahia. While the fall in Napier and Mahia had been about the same level as the previous year, the rainfall in Hastings in 2013 to mid-August was just under 600mm.The average annual rainfall for Napier is just over 800mm, and for Mahia about 50 per cent higher at about 1220mm.

The rainfall at the airport this month is less than a fifth of the August average, while at Hastings and Mahia it's little better, with the particular concern that the usual wettest days and weeks of the year have passed with little or no rain in the areas.

A Federated Farmers spokesman said yesterday other areas were experiencing similar issues, including parts of Canterbury hit by both last summer's drought and, now, the dairy price downturn, which he says is overshadowing the winter dry.

It is an irony that with the Ruataniwha Dam still the hot topic that it has been for the last five years, rainfall on the Takapau Plains is this year above average, although the 27mm so far this month is well short of the August average of 84mm.

With the infamous El Nino effect, climate agency NIWA has been forecasting a 40-45 per cent chance of rainfall continuing in the below-normal to near-normal range over the spring months.

Veteran stock buyer and farmer Don McLeod says it's "early days," but forecasts have not brought the rain from the east that is needed.

The most encouraging forecast for the next week was some showers.

"We must get it by the middle of September, or else," he said yesterday, the day of the weekly chinwag at Stortford Lodge.

"We've been through this cold winter. These cold conditions take the moisture out of the ground ... the weather can change, but at the moment if we haven't had the rain in September it will be difficult.

"In Hawke's Bay it's all about the cover on the ground, and this year we just haven't got that cover."