For temperature, this winter was normal. Otherwise, it was strange: it had the extreme low rainfall and low humidity that come with drought, without sunny skies or severe winter frosts.
During the season, two spells of weather stood out. In mid-June cool days and very warm nights came with rain, cloud, and high humidity. The last days of July and the first week of August had very warm sunny days with very low humidity. A mid-winter spell of cold weather in mid-July was not much colder than that in early June.
The number of frosts (40) was below the average number (44). The coldest screen reading was -3.7°, exactly on the average.
The percentage of mornings with more than 4/8 cloud (50%) was a new record for winter. Winters in 2008, 2009, and 2010 had percentages in the high forties, compared with the earlier average of 34%. On four mornings fog did not clear until late; five others had some fog in the valley.
Humidity was extremely low, marked by a mean early-morning Dew Point of 1.2°, the lowest winter mean on this record.
There were 19 rain days, which is normal. However, falls were extremely light: the highest daily reading of 8.2 mm was by far the lowest maximum reading in 13 winters. The winter total of 55.0 mm is in the 11th percentile: it was the 14th driest winter on record, only slightly wetter than that in the extreme drought year 2002 (44.6 mm).
Data. Rainfall data is from Manilla Post Office, courtesy of Phil Pinch. Temperatures, including subsoil at 750 mm, and other data are from 3 Monash Street, Manilla.