Man - I miss the snow! I grew up in Minnesota, and used to "winter" in Montana before moving to Seattle and now in Auckland. Nothing like a -44 cold snap to wake you up!

Down here it has been a long, hot and very dry summer. We have had a couple years of very dry almost drought conditions which has led to serious feed shortages - bad for a country that depends on dairy and lamb as key exports. Hay has gone from $2-3/bale a few years ago to averaging about $6-10/bale now. At one point last year, I saw it for sale at $20/bale!

Almost all of the population outside of the core urban areas depend on roof collected rainwater for their household water. Since the island is volcanic, and there are not that many folks (10x more sheep than people!) wells are expensive and hard to dig. We have two 5000 gallon tanks that collect from our roof and garage roof, and another 500 gallon tank on the shed to collect for the four horses. Right now in the dog days of summer, we probably have about three or four days water left in the big tanks and the small one is empty - siphoning off the big ones.

We need a good thunderstorm to dump for a few hours - or overnight. Or else we will have to get a tanker out to drop us their 14,000L. But, not having worked since August - I would rather eat that money than pour it down the drain.

El Climate-chango.