A WET YEAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 307, 28 December 1922, Page 4

A WET YEAR.

NEARLY 5,000 TONS TO THE ACRE. HEAVY RAIN IX DECEMBER. Although not by any means the wetteet year we have had in Auckland, 1922 has established a good lead over--1921 in the matter of rainfall, beating it by nearly eight inches up to the present date.

Although the weather does not seem able to make up its mind a* to what it will do, we may fairly assume that after last week's outburst it won't get any worse, and that probably we have had all the rain we are to get this year. Dairy farmers are naturally jubilant over the copioue rainfall, which has certainly come along just exactly when it was most needed by the pastures. And at the same time tcewnspeople have not >been inconvenienced. There have been years when everyone has been painfully aware of a wet season —that winter, for instance, when rain fell every day except one in June, but 192-2 has not .been so disagreeably impressed on one's memory. Probably the explanation is that a lot of the* rain fell at night, and further the winter from a temperature point of view was a very mild one.

Looking back, very few of us would think that in the first eight months of this year rain fell on 133 days out of 243, but euoh is the fact. For the 11 months of thi s year we have a total of 4-2.23 inches of rain as compared with 00-iO for the same period in 1921, 55.00 inches in 1920, and 31.52 inches in 1919. During the present month we ha-ve had 5.07 inches of rain, which is exceptional for this time of the year. This brings the 1022 fall up to 47.32 inches as against 39.68 for the full tnelve mont.is in 1!>21.