Category Archives: Monthly weather

Cold, cloudy wet February 2008

Posted in Manilla NSW, Monthly weather by

The daily weather logWeather log February 2008

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

Climate February 2008

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.

 

Very cool January 2008

Posted in Manilla NSW, Monthly weather by

The daily weather logWeather log January 2008

The month began sunny and dry, but two degrees cooler than usual. Three rainy days beginning on the fifth brought high humidity and one daily maximum temperature as low as 24.4°. This is 9.2° below normal! Eight fine days followed, with normal January temperatures.

With a second rainy spell from the 17th to the 21st, days were again remarkably cool: five days were more than 8° below normal. In the dry fine weather that followed, all temperatures – maximum, minimum, and mean – were even lower than when the month began. They slowly rose to normal by the end of the month.
Humidity was normal for January: the morning Dew Point was 10° to 12° in the dry spells and 18° in wet spells, giving an average of 14.2°.
Rain fell on nine days. The wettest day, the 17th, had 17.2 mm, and the total was 65.8 mm.

 Comparing January monthsClimate January 2008

This January had the coolest days in nine years, and the second coolest mean temperature. This month’s mean daily maximum (31.0°) was 2.9° below the nine-year average (33.9°), and an astonishing 4.4° below last year’s figure (35.4°). Because the mean maximum was low and the mean minimum was not, the mean daily temperature range this month (13.7°) was also low.

Using Dew Point to measure humidity, January and February are Manilla’s most humid months. This month’s mean morning Dew Point of 15.3° is normal.

With 39% of mornings having more than 4 octas of cloud, this was a cloudy month, but not as cloudy as December (58%) or November (50%).
The total monthly rainfall of 65.8 mm is 21 mm short of the long-term January average. However, total rainfalls for the last 2, 3, and 4 months are all above the 80th 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.

 

December 2007 cool, humid, cloudy, rainy

Posted in Manilla NSW, Monthly weather by

The daily weather logWeather log December 2007

Only four days, early in the month, had daily maximum temperatures warmer than normal. Decembers average five days over 35°, but there were none this month. The 22nd was nine degrees cooler than normal, at 24.2°. Daily minimum temperatures varied around the normal values (16°). The 7-day daily average temperature stayed below normal most of the time.

The graphs include the humidity of the air, using the Dew Point idea. All air contains moisture. If it cools to its Dew Point temperature, it gets so moist that cloud or fog forms, and dew appears. On humid days when the Dew Point is above 17°, most people find the weather unpleasantly sultry or sweaty. They find air with a low Dew Point, such as 5° or 10°, very pleasant and refreshing. The Dew Points shown on this graph are the early morning minimum values. Morning Dew Points this December were often between 15° and 18°: too humid for comfort. They never came below 10°.
Many mornings this month were overcast, and there were never two fine mornings together until the 29th.
There were fourteen rain days, with a total rainfall of 129.4 mm. The wettest day was the 4th, with 25.2 mm. There were only two runs of four days without rain, beginning on the 18th and 28th.

 Comparing December monthsClimate December 2007

The average daily maximum temperature this month, 29.4°, was far below the average for the last nine Decembers (31.7°). Only December 1999 had a slightly lower value (29.2°). The daily mean temperature (23.0°) was below average (24.0°), and the daily minimum temperature (16.6°) was near average (16.4°). As a result, the daily temperature range this month was only 12.8°.

The mean morning Dew Point for December 2007 is 14.2°. This high value, (meaning high humidity) seems to be about 2° above normal, but my record is short.
This was one of the three cloudiest months in nine years. The other two were also in 2007: November (50%) and June (60%).
The rainfall total of 129 mm makes this a very wet month. Only 14 Decembers since 1884 were wetter.
The year 2007 was wet: the total rainfall amounted to 741 mm. This is on the 68th percentile, meaning that higher rainfall has occurred roughly one year in three. The rainfall was 90 mm above the average (651 mm). It was the highest total since the strange wet year of 1998 (919 mm). That year nearly 400 mm more rain than usual fell in the six months that are normally the driest: from April to September.

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.

 

Very cloudy November 2007

Posted in Manilla NSW, Monthly weather by

The daily weather logWeather log November 2007

Warm humid weather, including one night 8° above normal, continued into early November. This developed into a cool rainy week. The coldest day (the 7th), registering 18.6° (9.8° below normal!), followed the wettest day, which had 17.2 mm of rain.

Eight sunny days followed, (Good luck for the NSW Gliding Championships at Lake Keepit!) ending with a storm on the 19th. Four more cool wet days brought the rain total to 67.8 mm. The last days of the month were overcast with very little rain (0.4 mm).
This was an average November for rainfall and mean temperature. Generally, days were cooler than normal, and nights were warmer, making the daily temperature range (12.8°) the lowest by far in nine Novembers. It was also the cloudiest of those months, with 50% cloudy mornings. Typically, November has about two days hotter than 35°, but there were none this time.

 Comparing November monthsClimate November 2007

November 2007 was not a drought month. The total rainfall was near average, not only for the month itself, but also for the last 2, 3, 4…months up to 60 months. Beyond that, total rainfalls for the last 6 to 9 years were rather low, because they included the extreme drought of 2002.

Since 2002 there has been only one extreme drought event: May 2006 had no rain. A less extreme, but still severe event was the two to five month drought peaking in May 2005.

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.

 

October 2007 warm, with rain

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The daily weather logWeather log October 2007

October was very warm. All but four days had daily maximum temperatures above normal. Night time minima varied at first, and then settled on the warm side. As a result, the seven-day mean temperature was a couple of degrees above normal nearly all the time.

The month began in a dry spell that reached 50-days before good rain fell on the 12th. After that, there was another 12-day dry spell. The dry spells had clear skies, very low humidity, and high daily temperature ranges of around 20°.
By the end of the month, however, a lot of rain had fallen, totalling 52 mm. It fell mainly in four days, with 17 mm on the 26th. The final wet spell was uncomfortably humid.

 Comparing October monthsClimate October 2007

This October was the warmest in nine years. Daily minima were 1.2° above average, daily means were 1.7° above average, and daily maxima were 2.3° above average. The high daily maximum value of 29.4° is usually seen in November, not October.

The rainfall of 52 mm was near the long-term average of 58 mm for October. Similar amounts fell in October 2005 and 2006. October 2000 had been wet (110 mm) and October 2002 dry (15 mm).
The total rainfall for the two months ending in October 2007 was rather low compared to the same two months in other years. At 54 mm, it was on the 19th percentile: that is, there has been less than 54 mm rainfall in September-October about one year in five. By contrast, the three months ending in October had rainfall above normal, and the last nine month period had rainfall well above normal. Most other periods, up to 48 months, have been slightly drier than normal. Just 2 mm extra per month would have made these last four years wetter than normal.

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.