My daily drive to and from work is through the rolling hills of Waimarama and it has been quite an experience this summer watching them go from a brilliant greet to a dusty brown.
We are used to the browning of our terrain over the Christmas/New Year period, but this year the process seems to be even more dramatic.
So, it came as no surprise when we reported MetService saying that drought could be on the horizon.
It seems as if Hawke's Bay is trapped in a flow of strong westerly winds and little rainfall. I can certainly attest that as most of my leave was spent outside in the hot winds working on my lifestyle block up on in the hills.
There still seems to be quite a bit of grazing out there for stock, including my little mob of sheep, but we certainly do seem headed for a drought. Indications at the end of winter were that it would be a rather wet summer with no prospects of drought, but those predictions have proved to be wrong.