Unseasonal Weather to Continue: Indonesia

The bizarre and unseasonal weather continues across the archipelago and it makes one wonder just what the heck is going on up there in the sky. Yesterday I posted an article about the dry harvests in the eastern islands and the wet in the western islands.

Wuryastuti Sunario of the Indonesia Digest agrees and has written a fabulous article about exactly this. Over the decades I have seen severe drought hit numerous islands, flooding beyond all proportions that is has virtually destroyed the livelihoods of farmers for years. And in one particular year I can recall a rodent plague with literally hundreds of thousands of mice eating their way through padi fields and rice barns. If I remember correctly there was even a locust plague. Here is Wuryastuti Sunario's article assessing the situation:

Out-of-Season Rains to continue into August: Floods and Draught

During the past weeks Indonesia saw extreme weather, both extreme rains as extreme drought. Floods with raging rivers spilling over banks causing erosion and carrying homes and belongings as well as waist-deep floods in cities are reported in South Sulawesi, Gorontalo and Bolaang Mongondow, all on the island of Sulawesi; also in the provinces of East and South Kalimantan, in the Moluccas and lately also on the island of Lombok.

On the other hand rice paddies in Central Java and parts of East Java are reported to be cracking dry as rains have not fallen here for weeks threatening rice harvests.

The widespread damages to human lives, villages and towns caused by the raging rivers are blamed on illegal logging on the upper reaches of the mountains as in Central Kalimantan, South Sulawesi and Bolaang Mongondow as well as on the conversion of forests into plantations by the local population since soft plants such as tea, cocoa or palm oil cannot hold the soil together and have now caused extreme flooding and landslides.

The Weather Bureau however has evidence that recent rains have been unusually heavy and further forecasts that the out-of season downpours will drench the islands of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, Papua, and parts of the East Nusa Tenggara islands well into August. Usually the dry season in Indonesia lasts between May into October.

And, as rain clouds are pulled towards the central and eastern parts of the Archipelago, it appears that Java is being left out and therefore suffers from dryness which if lasting longer will develop into a drought.

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