IT is official, Bendigo is suffering the worst drought in recorded history, with 2006 rainfall figures indicating the worst five-year period since records began.
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The annual rainfall total for the year was 326 mm, which represented the 11th driest since records began in 1863.
However, the figure pushed the five-year rainfall average even lower.
Bureau of Meteorology technical officer John Cornell said when drought was measured on the accumulative effect of successive years of rainfall the figure for 2006 looked much worse.
The past five years have averaged only 404 mm per year, against an overall average of 553 mm.
This makes the period more severe than the droughts which hit Victoria at Federation, from 1900 to 1904 with an annual average of 487 mm, and the drought from 1940 to 1944, with 439 mm per year.
Mr Cornell said 2006 had also been exacerbated by above average temperatures and very high evaporation rates.
He said from October to December, a combination of much higher than normal evaporation rates and winds had sucked precious water reserves off dams and catchments.
Mr Cornell said the monthly totals highlighted the severity of the late winter and spring drought, with the final quarter of the year delivering less than 10 per cent of the year's rainfall and barely five per cent of the annual average.
What makes 2006 so severe is the accumulation of below average rainfall years causing the loss of sub-soil moisture for farmers and the slow drying out of catchments, which means even when it does, rain inflows are less and storages are affected.
Severe dry years such as 1982 and 1994 have been followed by good rainfall years, easing the overall pressure on the land, but 2006 marks the third consecutive below average year for Bendigo.
Although 1982 was a record low year, with only 206 mm, it was followed by seven above-average rainfall years. Even 1938 and 1940 were separated by 763 mm in 1939.
But much of Victoria has been unable to recover since the dry of 2002, with 2003 yielding a barely-above-average 569 mm and each subsequent year at least 100 mm below average.
This equates to the loss of more than a whole year's rainfall in five years.
However, the Bureau of Meteorology's message is not all gloom, with senior climatologist Grant Beard last month predicting an easing of the affects of an El Nino pattern.
Mr Beard said Pacific Ocean temperatures indicated the El Nino, which played a strong part in the winter and spring drought, was weakening and led to the bureau predicting increased chances for above average rainfall in the first quarter of 2007 until March.
