As neighbours a couple of kilometres down the road empty full rain gauges, the Schafers’ property is a picture of dry paddocks and low dams.
Gary and Tania Schafer live near Thangool, two hours south of Rockhampton in central Queensland.
“Everybody around us seems to be getting this beautiful rain and we can just watch it go by and wave,” Ms Schafer said.
“We keep joking that we have a dome over our place.”
Tania Schafer at her property near Thangool. (Supplied: Tania Schafer)
The last “decent” drop of rain they had was in June and July with two night falls of 60 millimetres each.
In total for the year, they have had 300mm, a bit more than half of the 561mm recorded at the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) station at Thangool just down the road.
The mean annual rainfall for Thangool is 654mm, according to BOM data from 1929 to 2024.
The Schafers’ property is in a valley and surrounded by hills near Mount Scoria Conservation Park.
“They [rain clouds] come to the mouth of our valley and they just seem to go, ‘Oh hang on, we’re going to split’, one will go to the left and one will go to the right,” Ms Schafer said.
Green hills can be seen from the Schafers’ property. (Supplied: Tania Schafer )
The lack of rain has meant they have had to start supplement feeding their cattle with hay.
“We had good grass through winter … now we’re thin because we haven’t had that follow-up rain, we’ve got no growth,” Ms Schafer said.
“The cows have absolutely flogged it to the ground and we’re having to start feed.”
She said with little run-off from the valleys, dams on the property were also running low.
The Schafers’ property has had some rain this year, but this dam has completely dried up. (Supplied: Tania Schafer )
‘Hit-and-miss’ weather
BOM duty forecaster Daniel Hayes said local geography could have an impact on weather and land blocked by mountains or ranges could fall into a “rain shadow”.
Mr Hayes said there was a “hit-and-miss nature” to low-key weather phenomena like storms and showers, as opposed to broad-scale activity like large low-pressure systems or, in the case of northern Queensland, large tropical systems that move through the area and bring widespread rain.
A BOM forecaster says local geography can prevent some areas from getting good rain. (Supplied: Tania Schafer)
“We can see quite a bit less rainfall, for instance, in a place like Townsville because of the geography of the coast compared to what we might receive up in Cairns,” he said.
Mr Hayes said showers and storms could brew in inland areas and appear to move towards the coast, but then hit sea breeze lines pushing inland from the east.
“You’ll see all the rain occur along that area of convergence, but then nothing quite makes it through to the coast,” Mr Hayes said.
Keep rainfall records
Mr Hayes recommended landowners keep long-term records and compare them with neighbours.
“If it shows that long-term trend then you know you’re likely falling foul of one of those local effects,” he said.
The Schafers have been feeding hay to their cattle as their grass runs low. (Supplied: Tania Schafer)
Back in Thangool, Ms Schafer was trying to keep an upbeat attitude.
“I try to make light of it a bit because you’ve got to see the positive in things, otherwise that’s where your mental health starts really suffering,” she said.
