Strong relationships have been developed between both global and local phenomena in one season and precipitation in the next four seasons for years when the precipitation is likely to be low (drought years). The relations explain more than 65% of the variance in the precipitation for regions of up to 500,000 km2 and more than 35% of the variance for up to 1.3¿106 km2 in eastern Australia. The strong relationships occurred when precipitation was regressed against one of the variables in years that were selected on the basis of the magnitude of a third, so-called partitioning, variable. The relations are shown to be able to provide forecasts of low precipitation in all seasons of the year. Statistical tests show that the strong forecasting relations could not occur by chance. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union