The Year of the January Green

 

Something so extraordinary happened (I should think it's finishes now, with the onset of real summer heat) that it's worth stirring from my recent torpor and blogging about it...

This ... Never ... Happens. I'm not exaggerating. In fact, I've been ransacking my memory for any other year in which the South Australian landscape was green as County Cork in January, ten days after the summer solstice ... and I can't remember any other time. There was a year (1971 or 72, I can't quite recall) when it drizzled until shortly before Christmas, but by New Year the hills were baked brown and the catchments were half empty, as usual. This year? Well --

 

This never happens. Except, apparently, in an El Nino year with some weird dipole values and a heck of a lot of monsoonal activity in the north and east. Put it all together, and you get a cool, sometimes misty, and rather wet summer for us, which translates directly into ... green. And I have to say, I like it. A lot. The climate could settle into this pattern and stay right there, if it were up to me...

These images were all captured after New Year, and as far apart as Victor Harbor and the Flinders Ranges, by way of Clare Valley, the McLaren Vale region, Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, Nangawooka, and Brodie Road wetlands, which are in our own backyard. I'll say it again: Green!!!