Water and not

It’s been raining a lot in Auckland this month. Actually, over the past six weeks, more or less, the days that have been sunny have been few and far between. At best, we get a bit of sunshine in a day, but not even much of that. This is common enough in winter, and normally that fact makes it bearable, but this year all this rain carries a sting: There hasn’t been nearly enough of it.

As of this past Sunday, Auckland’s reservoirs together are only about 73% full. In winter. When it rains. A lot. Historically, they’d be about 89% full. Still, a few weeks ago, when they asked us to conserve water, and before this rainy season kicked in, they were only around 65% full, so, yay?

The reason for this problem is that we had a dry autumn with very little rain, so winter had a lot oc catching up to do. Problem is, winter started dry, too. So far this month, the dams have had a combined total rainfall of around 150mm of rain (about a third of that in the previous 7 days; it’ll be interesting to see if this week there’s been a higher rainfall, as it seemed). The average historical monthly total is around 180mm, so we’re a long way off of that—after dry periods preceding it.

The problem with this is that if our reservoirs are so low in winter, Aucklanders will need to prepare for water restrictions in the dry weeks of this coming summer. Saving water isn’t a long-term solution, though, and it’ll take a multifaceted approach to deal with inevitable droughts we’ll experience more frequently in the future.

Right now, there are too many barriers and costs associated with installing rainwater tanks for urban houses. Auckland Council will need to change that. There will probably need to be some sort of financial incentive to get people to install the tanks, and to upgrade their homes to be more efficient in water use.

Meanwhile, all this rain has definitely been miserable, with large ponds—almost small lakes—in farmers' fields throughout the area. Today I took the photo on the right side of this post. It's shows some minor flooding along our fenceline (the same fence that’s given us quite a few problems to deal with, most recently in May of this year). The flooding isn’t bad, obviously, but the thing about it is that in the two and a half years we’ve lived in this house, it’s never flooded there. I have no idea why it did now, but the ground is absolutely saturated (walking on it sounds like walking on a very wet sponge).

Still, even though it’s been raining a lot in Auckland this month, there hasn’t been nearly enough of it. That’s winter, 2019.

See also: “Auckland's dam levels”, which Watercare updates ever week.