When we had the visit from our cyclonic friend Alfred in March the rainfall he delivered resulted in a huge variation in readings in and around Noosa. In fact, I have one friend at Doonan whose March reading was almost twice what I recorded in Sunrise Beach. That being the case some of my readings will seem quite different to what you have experienced.
First off, let’s have a brief look at what happened in the first quarter last year. Our first quarter rainfall came in at a huge 1203mm which is almost twice our year-to-date average of 623mm. Even with the help of Alfred we couldn’t crack the average and finished up with a paltry 536mm for the first quarter.
Even though we exceeded the average rainfall in both January and March, the very low rainfall in February, which is usually our wettest month, prevented us getting even close. Our year-to-date average finished the quarter at just 80% of what is considered normal rainfall of 623mm.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt we have had a lot of overcast days, so I decided to have a look at the number of wet days we have endured.
We could expect to have no more than half of the rainy days we had last year seeing we had less than half the rainfall. That to me seams like a reasonable assumption until we have to apply it to the weather.
What in fact happened was we had 48 rainy days out of 90 days in the first quarter 2025 delivering just 536mm of rain, averaging a miserable 11mm per wet day. When we look at 2024 by comparison we averaged a little over 20mm for the 59 wet days. What’s really weird if we could have averaged 20mm of rain per wet this year we would enjoyed an extra three weeks of sunshine in the first quarter alone.
Now for the big question, what’s the rainfall going to be for the rest of the year. We all know that the best way to forecast the immediate future is to look at the recent pass, but we also know that doesn’t apply to rainfall (weather). However, this year the old adage seems to apply, the general forecast for the next five months is average or near average rainfall.
