The continued big wet over western Queensland and the Northern Territory is not only raising prospects of a boom season through the Channel Country, it also is likely to mean the best run of water into Lake Eyre for at least five years.
There have been heavy falls across parts of western Queensland that have resulted in floods in places such as Mount Isa, Cloncurry and Birdsville, which are feeding key Lake Eyre catchments such as the Diamantina River and Georgina Creek.
Further rainfall of up to 70mm to Tuesday in the Queensland catchment and the forecast of further rain this week has BOM hydrologists expecting the best inflows since at least 2004.
However, a Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson has stressed that the volume water actually which ends up in Australia's largest lake is largely dependent on weather conditions through the catchment from now on.
In terms of where the water will come from, flooding has been heaviest on the Georgina River and the Eyre Creek catchment, where the Bureau spokesman said flows were the heaviest for 10 years.
There has been a major flood warning for the Georgina River catchment for much of the week, including warnings for places such as Bedourie, Camoweal and Urandangie, following flooding earlier in January.
But flows from Lake Eyre's other major feeder, Cooper Creek, are small at this stage.
While it is agreed both by the BOM and other Lake Eyre monitors, such as the Lake Eyre Yacht Club, which keeps an eye on the lake with a view to sailing there should there be sufficient water, that there will be water in the lake at some point, it is unknown how much water will make the lake or when.
"It is likely that water will arrive until early to mid February, but as the water is not even in South Australia yet it is difficult to say how much or when," the Bureau spokesman said.
Along with pleasing South Australian and Queensland graziers, the news has also caught the eye of croppers in eastern and south-eastern Australia, many of whom believe that a full Lake Eyre is a signal of a good rainfall the following winter.
One of the ideas behind this is that the evaporation off the Lake is caught by passing cold fronts and creates greater rainfall in the south-east.
The theory is so prevalent that some farmers believe the government should pump sea water from the Spencer Gulf's most northern point across to Lake Torrens and Lake Eyre to generate more reliable rainfall for south-eastern Australia.
However, the BOM was quick to pour cold water on the theory.
"The perception of a relationship between Lake Eyre filling and a wet winter the next year is there, but the research has showed there is not much correlation," said BOM climatologist Blair Trewin.
He said one reason the theory existed was that Lake Eyre was often filled by a La Nina summer, which could then be followed by a La Nina winter, also associated with higher than average eastern seaboard rainfall.
"The evaporation theory could be explained as somewhat of a red herring," he said.
BOM research scientist Pandora Hope has done work specifically on Lake Eyre's effect on eastern Australian rainfall and said there was no specific reason water in Lake Eyre could influence weather patterns elsewhere.
"We have done some modelling, taking out the effect of a La Nina, to see what impact evaporation has on rainfall patterns, and it does not lead to greater rainfall," she said.
"The evaporation does lead to localised cooling and higher humidity, but this is only in the immediate area, basically above the Lake's surface.
"One of the main problems is that Lake Eyre generally sits under a high pressure system and the lows would not be near enough to harvest the moisture."
One farmer who refuses to be deterred by this explanation is Murtoa's Dale Frankel, who this year publicly called for the filling of Lake Torrens and Lake Eyre.
"There's certainly anecdotal evidence to support it, and I believe that if the two lakes are filled over our key growing season months of autumn, winter and spring, then we'd see higher rainfall as a result," he said.
"You see where most of the world's wettest places are – near the coast, where cold fronts feed off evaporation, so there's no reason it should not apply to eastern and south-eastern Australia.
"The cost of engineering such a project, which would only require a small amount of pumping the water from Port Augusta before it would gravity feed down into the lake system, pales into insignificance compared with all the feasibility studies and buyback schemes for the Murray-Darling that the federal government is spending money on at the moment.
"I'm not saying all the evaporation would be transformed into rainfall for south-eastern Australia, but I think it is a project the government should look more seriously at."
As for environmental concerns, he said that much of the area where a channel would run was already saline so it would not be an issue.
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