Those big low pressure systems that dumped so much rain on Australia in early Autumn had us imagining that the drought was over. Surrounded by green pastures, it sure looks that way.

But it’s the moisture in the subsoil that counts, and it seems that year after year of drought has left it bone dry.

Even the above-average rainfall that we’ve had in the last few months has had little effect on the subsoil. Trees, creeks and rivers are still in need of good, steady, Winter rainfall.

According to a report in the Weekly Times, Dr David Jones, head of climate monitoring and prediction at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), said that Victoria has had the wettest start to the year since the mid-1970s.

It’s worth noting here that in early March 2010, Victoria experienced some of its worst storms in living memory when an intense low pressure system delivered wild winds, hail and flooding rain across much of the state.

Climatologists have warned of such extreme weather for the last decade or so. But it seems that we’ve become so inured to dire warnings about all sorts of things, it’s not until we’re sweeping out the floodwaters from our storm-damaged houses that such predictions really start to make an impression.

A return to La Niña weather conditions has been suggested by more than half of BOM’s climate models but there’s still plenty of speculation on whether we’ll see average Winter rainfall in this part of the country.

In the meantime farmers affected by the ‘green drought’, currently affecting more than half of Victoria, are hoping that verdant pastures don’t detract from their need for Exceptional Circumstances Relief Payments. In these uncertain times, that’s one more challenge that they shouldn’t have to face.