Top End on track to break 80-year-old record after two wet seasons of low rainfall
ABCAmid predictions that many parts of the continent will be getting some much-needed rain this winter, Australia's Top End is experiencing its second bad wet season in a row, with some of the worst rainfalls since records began 80 years ago. Key points: Normal wet seasons provide around 1,600mm of rain, but this year it is looking to be more like 1,200mm It is the second bad wet season in as many years for the Top End The two years of poor rainfall are the worst on record since 1941, the BOM says The Bureau of Meteorology said it expected the western half of the Top End to get less than 1,200 millimetres of rain this wet season for the second year in a row. Lacklustre wet seasons turn parts of dam into quagmire At Fogg Dam Conservation Area, 70 kilometres south-east of Darwin, a muddy quagmire marks where a usually soaked water system should be. Mr Browning said ecosystems which relied on the "boom and bust" of monsoonal rains would come under increasing pressure if poor wet seasons persisted. "We would need to look at serious water restrictions if we have another two successive years of poor wet seasons though," Mr Durling said.
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