Please Mr Weatherman, where is the rain?

For those of you who don't know, most of southern and eastern Australia has been in the grips of drought for the past decade. My city, Melbourne, has just finished its driest year on record; 316ml (about 12 inches) from last May to this.

Over summer the vegies withered, the roses refused to bloom, the raspberries became ugly little sticks. Now, I appreciate life is a lot tougher out in the country; I at least can go out and buy things I can't grow.

What frustrates me more than anything is the weather reports. Every morning I check the ABC website and it tells me what percentage chance we have of what amount of rain. Yesterday, for instance, we had a 70 or 80 % chance of 5-10 ml. What happened? No rain. Today we have a 90% chance of 10-20 ml. What is today like? Dry and warm.

Now the Bureau of Meteorology supposedly has advanced computer models dedicated to predicting the weather. Somebody spends millions of dollars on this stuff. So why can't they get it even vaguely right? Or at least not get our hopes up.

Perhaps if they said we had a 1 1/2 % chance of 1 ml of rain (when they expected more), I wouldn't be so disappointed when it didn't come and I'd be thrilled if we got more.

On the other hand, I'd probably berate the weathermen for their poor predicting. I guess they can't win.