By Phil Jarratt
As the rain bucketed down in Noosa last week, Sunrise Beach resident Jim Kennedy put on his raincoat and his wellies and did what he does same time every morning – he checked his rain gauge.
Jim, 82, has been monitoring local rainfall for a few years now and in 2019 he began charting the fluctuations. He says: “What’s the most talked about thing in the world and what is the thing we can have least effect on? It’s the weather of course. And rainfall is generally the aspect of weather which gets the most attention.”
So Jim set out to become our own unofficial weatherman, and the first thing he can tell us is that last week’s consistently glum weather from midweek through the weekend was nothing compared with last January when Jim recorded 268mm of rain, nearly 60 percent of it on the one day, January 19. But that was by no means our wettest month, that honour going to February with 677mm, 274 percent of the February average.
Jim is at pains to explain that his gauge readings, on the coast at Sunrise, can be different from the official reading upriver a few kilometres at Tewantin, due to local topography, but they tend to average out.
The long term (since 1996) average annual rainfall for Tewantin is 1,669mm. For 2020 Jim recorded 2072mm of rain, or 24 percent above the yearly average. During the year we have wide fluctuations, with the wettest month being February with 677mm, 274 percent of monthly average. The next wettest was January with 268mm or 116 percent of the monthly average.
“Furthermore, says Jim, “We had rainfall on 111 days during 2020, or roughly one wet day out of three. August was the driest with just 21mm or 58 percent of average. The longest dry spell for the year was 27 days, at the end of September through to the third week of October.”
Jim’s prediction for the rest of 2021? “Well, we’re off to a pretty wet start, so we can only but hope that the rain gods will be just as kind to us this year as they were last year.”
Spoken like a true farmer, rather than a beach-loving tourist. Let’s hope the rain gods aren’t too generous.
