I don’t own an umbrella anymore
When I was a kid I used to get rained on all the time. I caught the train home from school, and had a 15 minute walk back from the station to my house. During winter this meant getting rained on at least once a week or sometimes more often.
As an adult I rarely get rained on – I don’t even own an umbrella or raincoat, although I do have a couple of water-resistant jackets that take a long time to soak through if I get caught in a downpour. I still catch the train home, from work instead of school. But I figured it was just a kind of childhood nostalgia that made me think I frequently had so much fun jumping in puddles.
Until I saw this graph. It’s of the average yearly inflow to dams here in Perth, going back to 1911.
Perth yearly dam inflow. Photo credit: Water Corporation, Options for our Water Future report
This is mostly coming from rainfall. My first thought was how much a difference there is between 2007 and the early parts of the 20th century, and how much more variation there used to be between a good year and a bad year for water. Now our bad years are still the same, but our good years don’t compare at all.
My second thought was “Yeah, I did get rained on more when I was a kid”. About 48% more, which is how much (on average, not for a specific year) rainfall has dropped here since the 80s.
And yet our water restrictions in Perth aren’t anywhere near as severe as they are in the eastern states. It might be time to really think about where our water is coming from, and if we have enough to go around.
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That’s a very powerful visual.
I have read that the dam inflow has been affected by allowing trees to grow up around the dams, a policy which started around 1980, the time of the first big drop in dam inflow. I am not sure if that is just wishful thinking on the part of the person making the claim, however, because rainfall has declined too – but it would be interesting to see the same graph but for rainfall rather than dam inflow.
When I was growing up, it would always rain on my brother’s birthday (July) and never on mine (November). Now it’s equally likely that neither will get rain.
And I remember going up to the dams in the hills to watch the waterfalls as the water overflowed the dam walls. That might never happen again.
I think people need to begin to understand that James Bond is right and the wars of the future will be about water, not oil…
I heard something about the trees in catchment areas too, when I was at the Water Forever conference. But it came from someone barely able to explain themselves, so I never really understood if it was a legitimate criticism or not.
James Bond? Don’t forget Tank Girl!