The Year of the January Green

Brodie Road Wetlands, from the roadbridge

Superb Fairywren at Onkaparinga Wetlands

Roo family at Onkaparinga Wetalnds

McLaren Vale area

Australian native bee at the Ironbarks, Kuitpo

 

Flinders Ranges

Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens

Gleeson Wetlands, Clare

Nangawooka

Something so extraordinary happened that it's worth blogging about. This ... Never ... Happens. I'm not exaggerating. In fact, I've been ransacking my memory for any other year in which the South Australian landscape was green as County Cork in January, ten days after the summer solstice ... and I can't remember any other time. There was a year (1971 or '72, I can't quite recall) when it drizzled until shortly before Christmas, but by New Year the hills were baked brown and the catchments were half empty, as usual. This year? Well --

This never happens. Except, apparently, in an El Nino year with some weird dipole values and a heck of a lot of monsoonal activity in the north and east. Put it all together, and you get a cool, sometimes misty, and rather wet summer for us, which translates directly into ... green. And I have to say, I like it. A lot. The climate could settle into this pattern and stay right there, if it were up to me...