The daily weather log

After 115.6 mm of rain in February, March crashed to just 2.2 mm with only three rain days. In 1971 it was worse: that year February had 173 mm and March 1 mm!
This month the air was very dry, too. Morning Dew Points which had been quite low (10°) all month, plunged to zero or less in the last days.
Although there were six cloudy mornings, eighteen mornings were completely cloud-free. The whole of the summer had only thirteen free of cloud!
Due to the dry, fine weather, three-quarters of the days had a range of temperature higher than the normal value of 15.4°. Three days had a range of 21° or more.
The 7-day average temperature began and ended well below normal, but was above normal in the third week. Nights were cold (8° below normal) in the first and last days.

 Comparing March months

The mean daily maximum temperature this March (29.9°) is normal, but the mean daily minimum (12.2°) is the lowest in ten years. It is 2° below the average, and 4° below that of 2007 (and 2000).
The mean morning Dew Point, 8.8°, is 3° lower than normal for March. This shows very dry air, which is wilting many shallow-rooted plants.
The total rainfall of 2.2 mm is much lower than the other Marches on the graph. It is not very low compared with Marches in the long-term record: it is on the 6th percentile. In Manilla, rainfall varies more in March and April than in other months.
There must be a lot of water deep in the soil. Total rainfalls for the last 2, 3… 18 months are all above the median. The four and five-month totals are particularly high, in the 83rd 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.