How come we don't have it?

Well, it's a good question.

It is an interesting thing.

When we look historically at when we have El Ninos, almost every one of them somewhere in eastern Australia and Libby has been drier.

And this year, it's clearly that southern Queensland, northern New South Wales area, who's been dry now for some many, many months, didn't get a great start to their season and their winter wasn't that good either.

And the problem is they're a bit closer to the El Nino action, to the Pacific up there.

And we are being influenced by other things.

So do you still anticipate it will hit us at some stage?

Does water in Lake Eyre provide an evaporative moisture source that may cushion the effect of the warmer ocean temperatures?" Great question, Tony.

Tony needs to send me a dollar in the mail because I get this, uh, question so much, uh, Fiona.

Um, the interesting thing about Lake Eyre is that people propose two theories, I suppose, Fiona.

One is that it's a moisture source or that whatever caused it to be wetter is continuing on.

People may remember that Lake Eyre filled this year in the early months of the year because of some really incredible weather conditions in the Channel Country, where the ocean in the Coral Sea to the northeast of Australia was incredibly warm and fed a heap of rainfall in and, and has filled Lake Eyre to a pretty high level.

Um, and the thing is, once we get to winter and spring, there is no connection with what caused that and, and what we have going on now in the, in the oceans and the atmosphere to the north of Australia.

The other thing that people propose is that, is that Lake Eyre is evaporating moisture on up into the atmosphere as a moisture source, potentially.

So, so h-how do people get to the point of, of discarding, uh, all the information that is out there, and especially if people are looking to use this information to make decisions in their farm businesses? Um, h-how do people make that, that call?

Because we had one, did we actually get to, I know it was called, but did we get to sort of full effects of El Nino in our last event? Yeah.

So I think the one that the person is talking about is 2023, where similar set up to this year, early in the season, talk of a potential El Nino forming.

And then, and quite dry start to the season, quite dry winter.

In fact, record low rainfall over some, you know, over winter in some parts of Victoria.

But none of the five factors that we look at in terms of El Nino locking into place.

We never had a proper El Nino in 2023. for our growing season at all.

And then, of course, as we know, it went wet in late spring.

Is much going on in those areas that we need to note of at the moment?