Hope its ok for you and other people in NSW with the extreme conditions. In Bendigo today we have had a pleasant day with the top temperature being 23C (would rather it be colder but 23 is alright) It has been partly cloudy with some sun getting in. However yesterday was very strange.
At the start of the day it was bright, sunny and got to 32C with no clouds in sight. However between 2:30-4:30 the weather changed drastically. Suddenly it became cloudy, rainy and cold. The good thing about the rain was we had 17.6mm of rain, which is almost 3x more than February combined (6.4mm) Just some typical Victorian weather with all 4 seasons in a day.
Only got to 27C in Bungendore which was a couple lower than predicted (28C in Canberra) but as I predicted, Penrith and Badgerys Creek got to 40C. A 13C difference between here and western Sydney is the highest I’ve noted so far I think. Also Sydney Airport but that station is severely affected by the urban heat island around there in a westerly wind (it has nothing but hot tarmac to its north and west).
We will get some of the cooler temps (mainly on Wednesday) but as usual for NSW in a westerly stream, it will remain dry. All we get is the wind. Bungendore is actually warmer than Bendigo in these type of conditions.
I’d like a top temperature of 23 degrees but here in Brisbane that’s our average winter day temperature.Today we have a very muggy 32 degrees
My air con is getting plenty of use so far this week.
Yes, that would be one of the big negatives of living in Queensland. IMO as I have said before I love cold days rather than hot days. Today will have a maximum of 18C in Bendigo and I love it. My personal scale:
I tend to work off average temps rather than just maximum temps in assessing a climate. This is especially apparent in the Canberra region, where you can have very large diurnal ranges. Thus a day with a relatively high maximum can be combined with a cool- even cold- night. You also get days where the maximum is reached for only a very brief time; this predominantly occurs when there is a brief incursion of dry winds in the middle of the day.
If you took only Bungendore’s average maximum of around 27C in summer, you’d say that it’s no cooler than western Sydney. But of course that’s nonsense. The evenings cool rapidly here and mornings are much cooler. The absolute minimum here in January was 4C, which is impossible in Parramatta or Penrith! The overall January mean temp is around 19-20 in Bungendore but around 23-25C in Sydney, and that is the smallest difference between the two over the course of the year (winter means are 6C or more cooler than Sydney).
There is a strong correlation between mean (not maximum) temp and indoor temperature, as well as soil temperature. So it’s really the best indicator of how comfortable a climate is. And we haven’t even mentioned the difference in dewpoint between Sydney and Bungendore
We could go for some of that down here again as the next drought has seemingly started- with added bushfires. The trouble is when it rains now it’s uber-rain.
Yep. I find the BOM’s rainfall predictions in the tropics in QLD are basically useless during the wet season.
I’ve got family near Mackay. They had a substantial rain event in January, about 700mm total.
The first day of had 160mm while the forecast was 0-15mm for that day.
Every single day after that for most of the week had way more than the BOM forecast was showing.
Today was a perfect example of BOM getting things wrong. The original forecast had the south eat looking forward to some good rain, but by this morning the bureau was back tracking a saying there would only be a few showers. That didn’t stop the breakfast shows though who didn’t get the memo.
High dewpoints without rain are unfortunately more common than you think. The Pilbara and Kimberley specialise in that type of weather, and it’s quite common along the NSW coast during a heatwave. A seabreeze blowing into an underlying hot airmass can only cool the air so much, particularly if the sea surface temperature is already warm. In heatwaves the humidity from the seabreeze is only very shallow and hence doesn’t produce any clouds or rainfall. A seabreeze is basically a natural evaporative cooler after all.