Backyard weatherman JIM KENNEDY looks for a meteorological answer
When we look back from the middle of autumn at the summer we just had, invariably the comment is, “What summer?”
Unfortunately there were not many positives to talk about, in fact, the only positive was really a negative in reverse – well at least the bushfire hazard wasn’t as bad.
Our summer, particularly January and February, had above average temperatures, above average humidity, and, of course, above average rain. What made these two months uncomfortable was the absence of our prevailing summer wind, the south-easterly. These were replaced by northerlies which bring with them high humidity and rainfall. These northerlies continued right through until the middle of March and by that time we were well truly over them. Worse still, we were over summer.
When we look at the rainfall for January, we had a whopping 549mm against a long-term average of 140mm. No wonder we thought it was wet, and this followed a December where we ended a low rainfall period of 19 months by having the heaviest rainfall since May 2022. Little did we know that December and January were just preparing us for what was to come in February-March.
What made it even more uncomfortable was the number of rainy days. We scored 19 rainy days in January which meant it rained just on two days out of three. Didn’t help our comfort factor one iota.
Then along comes February which turned out to be unusual for several reasons. Firstly, the rainfall was only 144mm, which was just 58 per cent of the average for the month. Secondly, we didn’t feel like we were getting less rain as it took 13 days for this meagre drop to fall. Meaning it rained just about every second day. Still above average temperatures with very high humidity. Northerlies still blowing and no sign of the moderating south-easterlies.
By now we were really well set for what March was to serve up. Back to heavy rain with 510mm where our average is 236mm. But it’s not the rainfall that was the real problem, it was the number of days it took to deliver the rain. It rained on a staggering 26 days, 20 of them consecutive. Yes, last month we only had five days when it didn’t rain for the entire month, which included only two fine, sunny days.
So you didn’t imagine that we had a terrible summer, by now you know for sure we did. Just to put these figures into perspective, we’ve now had over 75 per cent of our yearly average rainfall and 58 wet days for the first quarter of 91 days.
Bring on a dry late autumn!
