Editorial: Swift shift from drought

Our perception of rain will always be relative, writes Mark Story

In the blink of an eye we've moved from near-drought to deluge.

Was it really just a few weeks ago that we were eulogising the rain? Now, courtesy Cyclone Debbie, farmers in the region are being urged to move stock to higher ground.

'Tis an endless battle.

It's a shame the designers of the Opera House's precinct roof, or Dunedin's all-weather Forsyth Barr Stadium, can't be commissioned to produce a retractable sphere on a regional scale. (Needless to say our cricket and hockey fans would be keen).

The weather's labelled a hard taskmaster - but the reality it has an insanely tough audience. There's either too little, or too much of it.

At the weekend I spoke to an agricultural contractor who specialised in grass and cropping.

His smile was wide and had everything to do with spring rain. He told me when he's doing well the winegrowers suffer. When vintners toast a stellar vintage he laments a slow season.

Mother Nature will of course argue that every shower she cedes, is perfect. There's no such thing as 'unseasonal', or 'freakish', or 'surplus' or 'torrential' or 'light" rain, just rain.

The only person who seemed at peace with it in all circumstances was poet Hone Tuwhare, whose poem Rain, starts with the incandescent: "Rain...I can hear you
making small holes in the silence".

But Tuwhare was unique.

Unless the day comes when every farmer in the region decides to grow the same food, the perfect volume of rain will of course, never fall.