Federation Drought

In Australia, the Federation Drought is the name given to a prolonged period of drought that occurred around the time of Federation in 1901.

Though often thought of as a long drought, until the record dry year of 1902 the period was actually one of a number of very dry spells interspersed with wetter weather. Dry conditions gradually became established during the late 1890s and several dry areas joined together to create the end result of a drought covering over half the continent.

Except for a widespread El Niño drought in 1888, the late 1880s and early 1890s were a period of extremely heavy rainfall over New South Wales, Queensland and to a lesser extent Victoria and the "settled" areas of Tasmania and South Australia. Lake Eyre is believed to have filled with water from Cooper Creek in 1886/1887, 1889/1890 and 1894.

The wet spell of the early 1890s ended earliest in the area between Melbourne and Sydney, where rainfall in 1894 was below normal even as much of inland Queensland and New South Wales had one of their wettest years on record. A very hot November with temperatures reaching 40 °C (104 °F) made the situation critical in some areas. Though Sydney had heavy rainfall in January and February 1895, from March that year drought began spreading widely across New South Wales and Victoria. The winter that year was the driest on record in Sydney, and despite a relieving fall during September, Sydney’s rainfall for the period March to December was the third-lowest on record. The winter was dominated by very strong westerly winds to quite low latitudes and was very wet in southwestern Australia and wet in the Adelaide region and Western District of Victoria, but only about average in the drier areas further inland. Over all of Victoria and South Australia, however, extremely dry weather in October and November was sufficient to cause the failure of many wheat crops, whilst in East Gippsland these months saw unprecedented rainless spells.

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