The daily weather log

Reading the 7-day mean temperatures, the month started near normal, but cooled to unusually low figures by the end of the first week – five degrees down! For a week from the 19th it was only two degrees below normal, then back to four degrees down at the end of the month.
Days were particularly cool, running about 29° instead of 33°.  However, the coolest days were not extreme.
The warmest day, Friday the 22nd, reached only 35.5°. The following morning was the warmest at 26.1°.
Dry air arrived from the south on the 24th, with a Dew Point of only 5.8°.
Rain fell frequently until the 19th, with the 6th being the wettest day (32 mm). The 29th was also very wet. There were nine rain days, totalling 115.6 mm. This is nearly twice the long-term February average of 66 mm.
Very few mornings were “Fine” (with no cloud).

 Comparing February months

This was by far the coldest of the last nine Februaries, by day and by night. The mean daily maximum of 28.8°, the mean daily mean of 22.2°, and the mean daily minimum of 15.6° were all well below average, by 3.7°, 3.1°, and 2.5° respectively.
The contrast with the last two years is stark: the days in February 2007 were 4.5° hotter, and those in February 2006, 5.2° hotter than this month. (Note added: This cooling was global.)
With 58% of mornings exceeding 4 octas of cloud, this February, along with December 2007 (58%) and June 2007 (60%) was one of the cloudiest months in nine years. Most months in Manilla have about 30% cloudy mornings.

This month’s rainfall of 116 mm is in the 81st percentile of February totals. (Last February’s 128 mm was the seventeenth wettest February on record.) Taking rainfall totals for more than one month, every total up to 12 months is very high: above the 70th percentile.

Data. Rainfall data is from Manilla Post Office, courtesy of Phil Pinch. Dew point values before August 2005 are from Tamworth Airport 6 am data supplied by the Bureau of Meteorology. Temperature and other data are from 3 Monash Street, Manilla.