FILE PHOTO -A dead tree lies in a drought-effected paddock on farmer Tom Wollaston’s property located west of the town of Tamworth in New South Wales, Australia, June 2, 2018.
REUTERS/David Gray (For graphic on Australia drought thumbnails IMG, click tmsnrt.rs/2vgh37q) Record-low rainfall in some regions and successive seasons of above-average temperatures have blighted vast tracts of Australia’s grazing and crop land.
While the weather has improved in parts of Western Australia, winter rain has gone missing across much of the country’s east, leaving farmers praying for rain after planting seed in dry soil or culling cattle and sheep they can no longer afford to feed.
New South Wales, which just recorded its fifth-driest July on record, has been hardest hit.
(For graphic on Australia drought thumbnails Vegitation, click tmsnrt.rs/2M04A1k)
(For graphic on Australia drought thumbnails IMG, click tmsnrt.rs/2vi4BE4) Farmers have been shipping in hay from growers in the country’s west or the far north to feed their livestock.
(For graphic on Australia drought thumbnails Root zone soil, click tmsnrt.rs/2M3fQtL) Last year, drought cut Australia’s output to the lowest level in a decade.
This season has got off to an even worse start, with farmers planting in some of the driest soil in years.
(For graphic on Australia drought thumbnails Moisture seasonal chart, click tmsnrt.rs/2M8Gq4Y) Australia’s official forecaster has trimmed its estimate of this year’s wheat crop to 21.9 million tonnes, but warned yields would fall further without rain.
(For graphic on Australia drought thumbnails Deep soil map, click tmsnrt.rs/2M11xpx) The current dry period is not as extensive as the Millennium drought of 1997-2005, which devastated nearly 50 percent of the country’s agricultural land and was associated with two El Nino systems, which bring hot, dry weather to Australia.

Perth is expected to be lashed by rain, with heavy falls and hail possible on Thursday, while parts of South Australia will be battered by winds of up to 120km/h.
Sydney experienced its warmest July on record – and the warm conditions are set to continue with most days this week set to be above 20 degrees While it is still Winter in Sydney, many residents will flock to the beach over the next week, with the city climbing to a top of 26 degrees on Sunday Over in South Australia, Tuesday and Wednesday are shaping up to be windy, with Kangaroo Island to be the hardest hit as wind gusts of 120km/h are expected.
Weatherzone senior meteorologist Jacob Cronje told Daily Mail Australia a strong cold front will bring showers to southern parts of the nation.
Mr Cronje said most of the remainder of the country will be dry, with a majority of parts looking at warm days and cold nights.
Most parts of Sydney experienced less than 20 per cent of their typical July rainfall totals, the Bureau of Meteorology said While Sydney experiences a record run of warm and dry conditions, parts of southern Australia are in for wet and windy conditions over the next week The run of warm weather for Sydney comes as the city experienced a July which was warmer than normal, with New South Wales enduring a devastating drought.
Pictured, a map which shows rainfall across the state in July Australia as a whole also experienced the warmest and driest July in 20 years ‘Dry conditions were experienced across the region with most sites recording less than 20 per cent of their typical July totals.’
‘It was the fifth-driest July on record and driest since 2002 for New South Wales as a whole,’ BOM’s July climate summary said.
From May 1 to July 31, NSW experienced 50-100 mm of rainfall while inland Australia only had 2-10mm of rainfall The map shows which areas experienced their lowest rainfall on record compared to the highest on record ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes heatwave expert Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick said Australians should be expecting extreme weather …
Sunny although windy.
Sunny day.

Ongoing widespread drought conditions across eastern Australia is now being described as one in 20-year occurrence, with others saying it’s the worst in a generation.
Impacts of the drought are as dramatic as they are devastating.
Farmers are without feed, few are expected to harvest crops and water supplies are running sort.
Grain trucks that would normally be moving grain from farm to port are now having to move grain from Victoria and even SA.
Queensland has gone from exporter to grain importer.
Australia’s beef exports for the Jan/July period in 2018 are almost 642,000t which is 13 per cent up on last year.
Dry weather is threatening those few crops that were planted in southern Queensland.
Grain prices have continued to soar as Australia’s crop outlook deteriorates further as well as the worsening prospects for the European and Black Sea wheat harvests.
Prices for new crop wheat into Brisbane have climbed to $450 a tonne with barley fetching $425/t.
ASX January wheat futures, which are reflective of the new crop harvest price, rallied by $24 to $393/t, an increase of 7pc for the week.

Then Israel invested heavily in desalination technology and professed to have solved the problem by tapping into the abundant waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
Now, a five-year drought is challenging that strategy, as farmers struggle and the country’s most important bodies of water shrink.
In a bid to achieve water security, Israel has opened five desalination plants since 2005 and plans to expand that effort in the coming years.
But the tone has changed recently, and over the last few months a televised ad again has pleaded with Israelis to save water because — rehashing a tagline from previous campaigns — “Israel is drying up.” Critics say water conservation was sidelined in favor of desalination.
‘You need to conserve’ “Desalination doesn’t make up for everything, and when groundwater is suffering from drought and the Sea of Galilee is suffering from drought, you need to conserve,” said Caspi-Oron.
But there are no plans so far to pursue the measures this time around.
But in northern Israel, residents still rely on rapidly shrinking natural sources.
Israel has imposed a limit on the amount of water they can use, which has threatened an already tenuous livelihood and forced many to rethink their crops.
If I don’t water them for a year, 20 years would go down the drain,” he said.
The drought “will be solved, there is no question,” Steinitz, the energy minister, said.

Goetz problem is something the agriculture industry has been struggling with throughout the state this summer amidabnormally dry conditions.
The U.S. Drought Monitor on Tuesday reported that just over 43 percent of the state was under abnormally dry conditions; there was a moderate drought for over 25 percent.
"You used to hear folks talk about these nice, overnight rains that were slow and steady.
"You just don’t know when you’re going to get rain and where.
Meteorologists do their best to predict those things, but in the agricultural industry, we understand those factors are out of our control.
"It happens from time to time where things become abnormally dry due to the nature of weather patterns."
Irrigation is a common means for farmers to keep their crops alive.
Goetz said he put in a third well last year to make sure there’s enough water to outlast the dry conditions.
"In the summer months, with precipitation being quite variable, you could see adjacent areas get no rain and some get quite a bit of rain."
The reality of a drought, Goetz says, is that farmers have to make decisions about what plants need more water and which ones can get by with less.

DAVIS COUNTY, Iowa- The Drought Monitor Report out for this week in Iowa shows dry conditions spreading north towards I-80.
The southern half of Davis County remains in the third week of extreme drought, while parts of southeast and south central Iowa remain in severe, and moderate drought conditions.
We’re in extreme drought right now and there’s no rainfall in sight, said Ed Good, a livestock producer near Bloomfield.
“If we go into the winter like we’re thinking we’re probably going to dry, most of our ponds around here that we use for livestock are going to freeze dry, and we’re not gonna have any water.” Davis County has seen 13 inches of rain total for 2018.
“A lot of the parts of Davis County got a little rain the other day, but it’s so scattered,” said Good.
“The town got an inch and a half, we got six tenths, north of town got even less than that.” Good said due to the lack of grazing for cattle, some producers are looking to sell their herds, driving prices for cattle even lower.
He added that last year the drought was not reported accurately, this year the numbers are reflecting how series the situation is.
“They know now that Davis County is dry and they have the data.” “The saving grace for that is that we’ve had a cooler July,” said Justin Glisan, State Climatologist, at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
“The first part of July was a little above normal for most of the state, but in the second part of July, cooler conditions prevailed, across much of the state in southeastern and south central Iowa, which helped mitigate crop and livestock stresses that we would get from lack of precipitation.”

With a smoky evening expected Thursday, temperatures will slowly cool through the 80s into the upper 70s by 10 p.m. Overnight temperatures will reach a low of about 60 degrees for the Denver metro area.
Midday temperatures warm into the mid-80s, then scattered thunderstorms will form to impact late afternoon and evening plans.
The biggest threat from Friday’s storms will be lightning.
The overall storm chance is 40 percent, which is higher than anything coming through during the next five days.
Throughout the weekend, an isolated storm is possible.
However, conditions will be mostly dry and sunny.
Early next week will be much the same: Highs will be in the upper 80s to lower 90s.
There will be some scattered thunderstorms and smoky skies.
Colorado is experiencing the third-worst drought since 2000.
Those records date back to the late 1800s.

Dry weather in our area is not good news for the increasing drought.
We haven’t seen an inch of rain since July 19th and another inch is going to be hard to come by.
While drought conditions are worsening in Iowa, Central Illinois has seen some pretty good rains this week.
For that reason, the drought statewide in Illinois is improving.
All the while, Missouri is now seeing 95% of its land area in official drought conditions.
Here is a look at rainfall projections for the next week or so, courtesy of the National Weather Service GFS computer model.
There is a big hole in the map across northern Missouri and Western Illinois.
Let’s hope that changes somehow.
There’s a very small chance of a thunderstorm here Friday morning, with completely dry skies through early Monday morning.
-Meteorologist Eric Sorensen

The heatwave and drought conditions experienced across most of the country have been made official by Met Éireann statistics for July.
The east and south experienced the most prolonged period of drought and high temperatures in the country last month, according to the provisional figures.
While all areas experienced monthly rainfall totals that were below their long-term averages, absolute drought conditions were recorded at all Met Éireann weather stations in the east, south, west and midlands until July 14.
Absolute drought is when less than 0.2mm of precipitation is recorded over 15 consecutive days.
Partial drought conditions were recorded in the south until July 25, where some rain fell over 29 consecutive days of mostly dry weather.
The first half of the month was affected by a large high pressure system sweeping from Scandinavia to the Azores, which pushed the Atlantic jet stream away from Ireland.
This resulted in exceptionally warm and dry weather, with lots of sunshine and heatwave conditions for several days.
The trend continued for the second half of the month to July 26, except Atlantic weather fronts managed to break through, leading to rain and cooler conditions in some areas.
However, low pressure dominated from July 26 with periods of rain and thundery showers and strong winds.
Mount Dillon weather station in Co Roscommon had the unique distinction of recording both the lowest and highest temperatures of the month as the mercury dipped to 4.5C on July 10 after recording a high of 28.1C on July 4.

The drought represented an “unprecedented natural disaster”, reported the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ party.
We should muster all our power and capacity to fight high temperatures and droughts.” North Korea’s state-run media published several articles this weeksuggesting precautions in a country where air conditioning is almost non-existent.
Government television said the heat was taking a toll on the economy, which is already subject to a tight international sanctions regime imposed over the country’s nuclear programme.
“This weather will certainly influence food production and right now is a critical time especially for rice crops,” said Hiroyuki Konuma, a former Asia representative at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
“All the farmers have to listen to government directives and the decisions made now will be very important.
If this weather and drought continues for another week or two we should be very worried about North Korea’s food production.” The government has been working in recent years to boost production, but the system remains highly susceptible to weather extremes, he said.
Food, medicine and other humanitarian aid are exempt, and experts suggested state media attention on the problem may be a cry for help.
“There is no tomorrow when it comes to fighting against high temperatures and droughts,” the Rodong Sinmun comment said, according to a translation by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
An unnamed source quoted by Daily NK, a Seoul-based news service, said: “North Koreans are expressing a great deal of concern because people are suffering from life-threatening heat and crops that are drying out.” People have collapsed in the street due to the heat, the report said, and farmers are struggling to follow government orders to water fields by hand because of water shortages and extreme working conditions.
In South Korea, far wealthier than its northern neighbour, there have been at least 29 deaths caused by the heat and more than 3 million head of livestock have been killed.