|
 NSW, VIC: Murray River inflows at record low
Total water flowing into the Murray River in July was 130 gigalitres, the lowest for any month in a century of records. The SA Minister for the Murray River, Karlene Maywald, told ABC Victoria a couple of years of very high rainfall were required to bring the catchment back to normal. "At the moment we're looking at moving into our sixth consecutive dry year," she said. "We don't have any data of the 100 years of records that we've been keeping that compares to this. So it really is quite a critical situation that we're facing."
Professor Peter Cullen, a water researcher and member of the Wentworth Group of Scientists, told ABC Victoria that the low flows will lead to inevitable tension between "farmers that are going broke and the environmental demands. The Victorian Minister's just deferred allocating some of the environment water to the Wimmera River," he said. "Now, that's a river that's on 18 per cent of its 50-year average. It's been averaging 18 per cent over the last decade, so that river hasn't seen much flow for a long time, and there's going to be great tensions between environmental water and production water."
 NSW, VIC: Worst snow season in 30 years improves -- a bit
Natural snow conditions in the Snowy Mountains received a boost today when around 10 to 15cm of fresh snow topped up an almost record low snowpack. Light to moderate snow fell from soon after daybreak through the day, pushing the snow depth at Kosciuszko Chalet from 76cm at 9am to 86 by 3pm. In the VIC Alps, the snow depth at Falls Creek jumped from 36cm at 9 this morning to 45cm at 9am Friday morning.
Snowy Hydro has kept records of snow depth at Spencers Creek, at 1830m elevation and about 2km east of Kosciuszko Chalet, since 1953. The worst snow depth profile year was 1982, when the depth remained constant around 20cm during June, rose slowly to 50cm by the end of July, peaking at 90cm in late August. The second-worst year was 1973, when, after an early June dump, the depth stayed around 45cm until a second dump at the beginning of September raised it to 120cm. The profile this year so far lies somewhere between those of 1982 and 1973, with the depth at Spencers Creek at 9 this morning just 77.3cm. Two lower-level snow courses measured by Snowy Hydro since the mid-1950s are at Deep Creek (1620m, 10km S of Cabramurra) and Three Mile Dam (1460m, 5km W of Kiandra). The snow depths at these locations were 14.6cm and zero at 9am, and have been below the 1982 levels but just above the 1973 levels during the season so far.
Prs Ext Rec Not War Rdr Cht Rfl Rec
|
