Hydrometeorology

One of the scientific papers of H. C. Russell in the late 1800s emphasised that it was difficult for those living in England to imagine the severity of Australian droughts with periods of many months without rainfall, during which rivers ceased flowing, dams dried out, crops withered and the land became completely barren. Australia was recognised as the world's driest continent. Some may argue that Antarctica has less precipitation and is therefore drier.

It was not surprising therefore that Russell and the other colonial meteorologists gave the highest priority to the measurement and recording of rainfall. When the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology was established in 1908 this emphasis on the measurement of rainfall continued and rainfall bulletins were published daily and summaries published annually. Droughts were sometimes followed by floods of unimaginable magnitude and the Bureau maintained a network of readers of river height with daily levels being published in newspapers and later included in the country hour broadcasts of ABC radio stations.

The Bureau's Divisional Offices issued flood warnings sometimes with an indication of the expected severity of flooding, but they were usually of limited accuracy and precision. These flood warnings continued in the Warren and Timcke years but at most stations observations of rainfall and river height were made only once daily and the warnings still lacked precision and accuracy.

The Bureau's Climatological Sections in Central Office and the Divisional Offices continued to study rainfall statistics and to publish climatological summaries which contained rainfall and other data. They also provided advice on average rainfall to farmers and engineers. In earlier years Henry Barkley had used probability paper to depict rainfall distributions and such studies interested State and Federal Government officials considering the construction of large water storages, such as the Burrinjuck Dam in NSW.

Bureau of Meteorology