Now in drought

June raw anomaly data (orange)

The raw rainfall anomaly for June 2018 was very low (high on the graph), as was that of the month before. This placed June in drought, although the other moisture indicators were nearer to normal. Daily maximum and minimum temperatures were also not far above normal, but subsoil temperature was very high.

 Fully smoothed data (red)

The last fully-smoothed data is for December 2017. All variables, except subsoil temperature, continued trends set in the spring.

Daily maximum temperature anomaly approached a record high value.
Rainfall anomaly approached a record low value.
Cloudiness was static near its normal maximum.
Dew point anomaly was low but slowly rising.
Daily temperature range anomaly was high but slowly falling.
Daily minimum temperature anomaly was high and rising.
Subsoil temperature anomaly, which had been falling, began to rise.

Note:

Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares.
Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.

Normal values are based on averages for the decade from March 1999.* They appear on these graphs as a turquoise (turquoise) circle at the origin (0,0). A range of anomalies called “normal” is shown by a dashed rectangle in aqua (aqua). For values in degrees, the assigned normal range is +/-0.7°; for cloudiness, +/-7%; for monthly rainfall, +/-14 mm.

 * Normal values for rainfall are based on averages for the 125 years beginning 1883.