Dread as spectre of El Nino haunts a parched continent

This drover herding more than 600 cattle along an outback road in Queensland is one of thousands of primary industry workers coping with the severe drought. Picture / Reuters

CANBERRA - Raging bushfires and shrivelled crops have given Australia a grim pointer to the coming summer.

As temperatures along most of the east coast yesterday climbed into the middle to high 20s, the nation was again warned of looming drought, water shortages in the major cities, and the likelihood of major fires over vast tracts of the continent.

Last month was the driest August since records began in 1900, with key catchments in Perth and Melbourne recording the lowest rainfalls in more than a century. Worse may be coming.

The Bureau of Meteorology is wary that another El Nino may be on the way, bringing with it extremely hot, dry summer months.

The United States Climate Prediction Centre estimates the chance of an El Nino - a weather phenomenon caused by changes in ocean surface temperatures - is 50 per cent.

Although the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is not yet predicting a recurrence of the phenomenon that in the past has been linked to severe drought and horrendous bushfires, it says that even if it does not occur the summer will still be very harsh.

And it says conditions will be made worse by the legacy of the long, dry period that has gripped much of southern Australia for a decade, and eastern Australia since 2002.

Yesterday the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics said the impact was already hammering the nation's farms.

Acting chief executive Karen Schneider said record low rainfall was expected to slash winter crop production by 36 per cent.

In New South Wales, where drought grips 92 per cent of the state, late planting caused by delayed seasonal rains and the dehydrated winter has especially slugged southern and central farms.

Similar conditions afflict farms across much of Victoria, along large areas of the West Australian grainbelt, and most of Queensland.

And a promising start to the winter crop season in South Australia stumbled as the record dry August bit.

Schneider warned that unless rain fell soon, another blow would fall.

Even if farms received average spring rainfalls, summer crop production would still fall by 10 per cent.

Firefighters fear the worst.

In NSW, where weather forecasters have predicted a doubling in days of extreme fire risk even without an El Nino, total fire bans were imposed on Monday across a swath of the south.

Yesterday, Victorian firefighters called in water-bombing aircraft to help battle a blaze that erupted from a fuel-reduction burn into the Murray-Sunset National Park about 500km northwest of Melbourne. In South Australia the fire risk was extreme as temperatures and winds increased.