The Hawke's Bay Regional Council and farmers throughout much of Hawke's Bay continue to follow the season indicators closely as a lack of rain creates an unusual August brown across the landscape.
The crucial data are taken from a network of about 70 mainly remote and sometimes barely accessible rainfall gauge sites, telemetered and non-telemetered, providing near instant details of what the weather is doing in the area and, in the case of rainfall, an indication of what it is going do.
All sites use a 0.5mm tipping bucket rain gauge and record rainfall intensity information at 15-minute intervals, the telemetered network providing an early flood warning network, in particular in the Wairoa and northern part of the region.
The details, along with those from weather agency MetService, show that rainfall on the Heretaunga Plains and Northern Hawke's Bay has been below average for at least seven months out of the past nine.
The major respite was in June, but it returned to dry in areas north of Napier where, in some cases, July rainfall was less than 10 per cent of the average for the month while, in western reaches of Central Hawke's Bay into the Ruahine Ranges, rainfall was as much as twice the month's average