It's raining!

Yes, you can hear me jumping up and down with joy at that statement - it has been unusually dry around here lately. The rain started last night, a very welcome sound on our roof.

In the latest edition of the local newspaper, the Kaiwaka Bugle, the rainfall figures say that we had a quarter less rain over January to March this year than last.

I grew up with my Auckland-bred father saying "if it's not raining, it's going to" - and he was generally right. Auckland and the north are sub-tropical and it rains frequently.

Last summer (2007-08) while large parts of New Zealand were in drought, here in the Kaipara District we didn't even have a fire ban. (Some local bodies automatically impose a ban each summer, KDC imposes one if the conditions dictate.)

This summer just past (2008-09) the droughts down south didn't seem to be as bad as the previous year, but we were drier and had a fire ban for a while.

The local farmers will be very pleased with this rain replenishing their paddocks, and everyone will be welcoming the water in their tanks. I hadn't checked mine lately, but I expect it was getting low.

We live off rain water here, collected from our roofs. An electric pump delivers it to the taps. It's some of the best water around, IMHO - much better than city water that tastes of chemicals. The major down-side to our water supply is that if there is a power cut we don't have any water. Here at our place we do not have any taps fed by the tank that are independent of the pump - something I want to rectify one day. But we do have clean buckets at the ready to dip in should the need arise (which it shouldn't, now that we have a small generator, but I'm not going to tempt fate). :-)