HANDS up if you’re sick of the rain. Hands up also if your best-laid plans to get the lawns mowed are thwarted at every turn by showers, storms and just plain rain.
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Just halfway through December and the region, along with much of the state, is waterlogged. Rainfall averages have been exceeded, gardens are looking lush, if a little overgrown, and parents of young children are anxiously awaiting a break in the weather so they get the young ones outside and active and away from their screens.
Bad news? Not entirely. The Rural Fire Service is predicting this will be one of the rare Christmases in recent memory which allows volunteers to spend time with their families, rather than facing callouts to deal with bushfires. The fuel loads in the bush are sodden and will take at least a few weeks of hot weather to dry out.
This cloud with the silver lining comes with a caveat. Before you put down your Bushfire Survival Plan, remember that summer has a long way to play and there may well be a return to the hot, dry conditions that had firefighters so worried before the onset of the season.
If that does eventuate, the grasses and foliage that have flourished through the wet will turn a benign outlook into one fraught with danger.
As Far South Coast RFS team leader John Cullen told us, the biggest danger now is complacency. To beat it, adopt or review your Bushfire Survival Plan and at the first opportunity, attack that overgrown grass and garden.