Farmers across Australia are anxiously watching long-term climate forecasts, with fears a hot and dry El Niño system could back up the current flood-inducing La Niña.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has advised that 40 per cent of past La Niña events have switched to El Niño events in the same year that a La Niña has ended.
This year's La Niña is expected to recede by autumn.
The last El Niño resulted in a record-breaking drought from 2017 to 2020, and that has farmers worried.
"I don't want to think about El Niño or another drought," Moree grain and beef producer Oscar Pearce said.
"The last drought was brutal in this region.
"Why can't we just have a normal season for a change?"
Drought no 'certainty' with El Niño
But BOM meteorologist Blair Trewin said while an El Niño system may mean drier or warmer than average conditions, it did not mean that drought was a certainty.
"It is possible to have a weak El Niño that doesn't cause a serious deficiency in rainfall," he said.
University of NSW climate scientist Agus Santoso said there was a real possibility that Australia would go into El Niño, because of the warm water in the climate systems.
"It is a worrying sign as there are studies, including one that I was involved in, that show that with global warming the swings from one extreme weather system to another now happen much more quickly," Dr Santoso said.
Drought 'definitely in the air'
Keiley Noble owns a property at Narromine and said drought was "definitely in the air at the moment".
She said she wanted some rain but not too much that it stopped her husband cutting hay, given the "miserable" year or two they have had in the hay contracting business.
The soil on their farm has developed some cracks recently and it has been bringing back some bad memories of the last drought.
"Working in a machinery dealership during the last drought, I saw my colleagues being made redundant on the spot and it was quite hard to watch," Ms Noble said.
The rain 'stopped' in November
Graham Creed is growing flowers, three types of garlic and producing honey on his farm at Stroud in the Hunter Valley in NSW.
The former ABC weather forecaster said it was "extremely dry" on his farm.
"It's bizarre considering we had multiple floods in July and August."
"Halfway through November the rain stopped, totals were well below average, and we only had a quarter of our normal rainfall in December."
Mr Creed said people in his district were now worried about fire and fodder for livestock.
"We need rain soon to produce pasture and we're worried about bushfires because not much of the Hunter burnt in the last fires."
He said the weather over the next few months was hard to predict.
"La Niña is weakening, but it's still in a wetter phase and there's still potential for wet conditions.
"We're likely to see some areas missing out, and some getting torrential rainfall."
Farmers prepared for dry weather
Like many other farmers, Mr Creed has set himself up to deal with the next big dry by building a big dam and planting lots of natives that are resilient to drought.
And his bees are happy.
"The iron barks are active, the wattle is in flower and there are other trees still to come into bloom, so there's plenty of food about.
"If it dries out the nector might ease off, but at the moment they're extremely active."
Even if El Niño does not develop, Dr Santoso warned that "normal" conditions may still be tough for some farmers.
"That could still be much hotter and drier than we are used to seeing as the planet is "already 1.5 degrees warmer".
