Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla
“October 2014 droughty”

October data (orange)

All raw anomaly values for October, except subsoil temperature, moved suddenly to drought: high temperatures and little moisture. Subsoil temperature, which had been at a record high value fifteen months earlier, became very low.

Fully smoothed data (red)

The latest fully-smoothed data (April 2014), like that of the previous month, continued the trends established in summer. All (except daily minimum temperature) moved away from drought. A movement back towards drought came only later.
Since the major “flooding rains” episode of summer 2011-12, (lower left corner on the graphs)  Manilla’s climate has swung towards drought three times:
(i) a very mild drought in October 2012, returning to normal by March 2013;
(ii) a moderate drought that was very hot in October 2013 and dry in January 2014, returning to normal about May 2014;
(iii) perhaps a further drought about October 2014 (to be identified later).

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.