This is the Friends of History, Debating Society.

I'm John Bachelor, to New South Wales, to Jeremy Zachis in Sydney, watching El Nino.

It's been weeks of cautious approach, and the Metropolitan Weather Office, Meteorology

Office in Australia has now declared this El Nino.

El Nino means dry and hot, however it rains.

Jeremy, a very good day to you.

Tell me you've had a great deal of rain.

What's this?

Is it not a real El Nino?

Good evening to you.

G'day, John.

Yes, this is almost ironic in many ways, because you may remember our Bureau of Meteorology

spent so much time, so many weeks, actually holding back on declaring El Nino as a real

event, even though it was very dry, very hot here, that only less than three weeks after

they officially declared it, we had exactly the opposite to an El Nino type of weather system,

and we did.

We had rain, so instead of getting the dry, windy conditions that you're expecting to

get with El Nino, we had over four inches of rain in most parts of the eastern seaboard

here, and it wasn't over a long period either.

It was over a period of about 16 hours, which as you can imagine, John, this intense rain

just focusing on such a short period of time, actually coarse flash fighting, and that

in itself is very unusual, because El Nino shouldn't be bringing flash fighting here in

...