What is going on with the weather? The black cockatoo’s are still settling in the belah trees and the slater’s are still heading west at the first hint of possible rain so we know we are in for a wet time however other things just don’t feel right. The winds have changed for one thing. We can have a damaging blow in one area and a mere kilometre away it is totally still. Different grasses are growing where they have not germinated before and after the heatwaves of January our typically hottest month, February was reasonably pleasant however very humid.

Worldwide the climate appears to have gone haywire. For quite a while now many people have been wondering if we are heading towards a major climatic shift. Call it climate change or the earth’s own cycle or a combination of both. Something is certainly happening. A brief trawl over the internet and one would think that things are heating up. In the last week of January this year there were eight earthquakes. Apparently there are slight tremors across the globe on a regular basis however anything above .4 can become dangerous if they are shallow. So where have these quakes been located? Indonesia, Alaska, Kazakhstan, Chile, Ecudor, the South Pole, off the coast of Oregon and Russia’s far east. 

In between there has been severe flooding, landslides, snowstorms, tornadoes and sinkholes forming in any number of countries and just last week quakes hit Bulgaria and off the coast of Fiji. Of course technology allows us to hear or read of these events in an instant and no doubt if we could go back in time there would be similar periods in earth’s history. However some of these periods led to changes in geography across the globe.

With the seventh cyclone spiralling off the far north Queensland coast and the eminent Dr Rodger Stone explaining that this mini-La Nina is very unusual you have to start to wonder what will happen next. Well Dr Stone has said that it will most probably be a drought (La Nina events historically precede droughts) – Joy! However the wider implications are unknown. Australia, although historically safe from major earthquakes seems to have been hit with everything else recently; droughts, floods, bushfires, duststorms, tornadoes, and that’s just over the last few months. Being a bush girl I always have the pantry stocked with extra tinned food – just in case! Best to be prepared I say.