After a dry start, some rain has now spilled over from the coastal weather. We are on track for a normal dry season monthly rainfall of about 40 mm.
Temperatures seem to be back near normal after the cold summer.

Bathurst will prob be a bit warmer than average, currently marginally above the min, max running a good 2 degrees over. Rain mtd only 5mm instead of avge about 40mm.

This month is tracking quite nicely for me. Rainfall now up 48mm, only 14mm to go to get to normal which should happen over the next couple of days. Temps still at +1.4, but a cool last week to come that could still get the mean temp to near normal as well.

We've made a nice recovery here with rainfall over the past week or so, after what was turning into a below average start to the year. I will post my usual monthly summary at the end of the month of course.


For those who don't like numbers/statistics, I don't recommend reading any further, lol.

Note: 2002 to 2012 rainfall figures were personally recorded by myself. 1982 to 2002 figures are from nearby Smoky Cape Lighthouse. Monthly/Yearly Average(s) are also from Smoky Cape L'House.

For South West Rocks, the 3 month total is slightly above average. All other periods are above to well above average. (I won't get much more rainfall this month, so I've treated it as a complete month just to make things a bit easier).
3 month total (Feb 2012 - Apr 2012): 539.0mm (Feb-Apr Avg. 522.4mm)

6 month total (Nov 2011 - Apr 2012): 1040.0mm (Nov-Apr Avg. 903.5mm)

9 month total (Aug 2011 - Apr 2012): 1363.8mm (Aug-Apr Avg. 1134.7mm)

12 month total (May 2011 - Apr 2012): 2104.6mm (Annual Avg. 1485.2mm)

24 month total (May 2010 - Apr 2012): 3688.4mm (2 year Avg. 2970.4mm)

36 month total (May 2009 - Apr 2012): 5085.8mm (3 year Avg. 4455.6mm)

~~~~~

I've done some further investigating:
The drought pretty much started in 2002, so the 10 year period fits nicely.
10 year total (May 2002 - Apr 2012): 14268.4mm (10 year Avg. 14852.0mm)
- Wettest year: 2110.0mm (2009)
- Driest year: 1046.8mm (2007)

And basically a couple of random extras:
20 year total (May 1992 - Apr 2012): 28595.7mm (20 year Avg. 29704.0mm)
- Wettest year: 2246.4mm (1999)
- Driest year: 1044.8mm (1994)

30 year total (May 1982 - Apr 2012): 45403.1mm (30 year Avg. 44556.0mm)
- Wettest year: 2246.4mm (1999) (though 1989 was the wettest for the May 1982 to Apr 1992 period, with 2112.2mm)
- Driest year: 1002.6mm (1991)

The May 1992 to Apr 2002 period was only 58.9mm wetter than the May 2002 to Apr 2012 period. The average annual rainfall for the past 30 year period is about 1513mm, which is slightly higher than the average annual rainfall for the past 73 years of records (by around 28mm).

Hi Seabreeze

I'm puzzled by:

"The drought pretty much started in 2002, so the 10 year period fits nicely.
10 year total (May 2002 - Apr 2012): 14268.4mm (10 year Avg. 14852.0mm)"

Why do you call 2002-2012 a drought? Your figures show it had 96% of the usual rain. Or is that your point - that it wasn't actually a drought?
Over here, the 2002 drought ended early in 2003, which is something I keep saying.
Even the 2002 drought here merely balanced the 1998 deluge.

I meant the 'drought years' of recent fit in nicely within that 10 year period, not that the entire 2002 to 2012 period was drought. Also within that period were the very wet years of 2009 and 2011, and I thought it was a bit neat that they all fell into the same 10 year period. I thought it was a great example of how places do recover from drought because rain for that 10 year period was essentially normal. Sorry, how I initially worded it was too vague.
The 'drought years' I refer to above during that 10 year period are: 2002/03 and 2006/07. There were other below average years in that period but 02/03 and 06/07 were the worst. I'd probably argue that locally the drought in 06/07 was marginally worse than 02/03.

Here, west of the divide, only 2002 stands out as a drought year recently.
In another thread I have shown logs of summer and winter climate anomalies separately for the last 12 years.It is not easy to distinguish the "drought" years.
Some pattern appears when I overlay summers on preceding winters, using a composite "Moisture Index" that includes other variables as well as rainfall anomaly. The graph is labelled "Manilla Winter and Next Summer Moisture".
The year 2002 had by far the driest winter, with 2006 also very dry. As for summer droughts, 06-07 was one among many drier summers, including the first four: 99-00, 00-01, 01-02, and 02-03, then 04-05 and 06-07.

As for the thread topic, April seems to be coming out a bit on the cool and wet side of normal.

Just doing a quick read of these posts I can take you back to the famous 1982-183 drought that included the ash Wednesday bushfires. Although it was so severe it was not prolonged and it broke in March with a massive monsoonal low followed by a couple of huge rain events that swamped most of eastern Australia.I am now looking at a map in a weather book called '"wonders of the weather" by Bob Crowder showng the ten month period May 82-Feb 83 showing large areas of se Austalia with lowest on record figures. But if you look at the whole of 1983 the drought looks like it never occurred because of the huge rainfalls from march to july. I think during that period from 2002 overall was considered to be dominated by drought but of course the were periods when it was severe; and in some areas there were times when it was wet. Also the longer the period you take when looking at rainfall anomalies the more it is going to look like average.
Cheers everyone

Here's a comparison of 2002/2003 and 2006/2007 drought periods for here Surly.

(Using Smoky Cape's long-term rainfall averages)

2002/2003 drought, there were 10 consecutive months of below average rainfall:
Apr 71.4mm (Avg. 170.8mm)
May 50.0mm (Avg. 133.6mm)
Jun 61.0mm (Avg. 139.1mm)
Jul 0mm (Avg. 78.7mm) (equal driest on record)
Aug 67.4mm (Avg. 80.4mm)
Sep 0mm (Avg. 56.6mm) (equal driest on record)
Oct 85.4mm (Avg. 94.2mm)
Nov 17.0mm (Avg. 114.8mm) (below 5th percentile)
Dec 117.4mm (Avg. 119.4mm)
Jan 35.2mm (Avg. 146.9mm) (below 10th percentile)
Total: 504.8mm (Apr-Jan Avg. 1134.5mm)
or 44.5% of average for that 10 month period.

The 02/03 drought was mainly over the winter/spring months. They are our driest seasons of the year (Spring is slightly drier than winter, on average). Over 600mm fell in Feb and Mar 2002 before the start of the period of drought.


2006/2007 drought, there was also 10 consecutive months of below average rainfall:
Oct 37.6mm (Avg. 94.2mm)
Nov 94.6mm (Avg. 114.8mm)
Dec 59.8mm (Avg. 119.4mm)
Jan 9.8mm (Avg. 146.9mm) (driest on record)
Feb 126.6mm (Avg. 168.6mm)
Mar 91.8mm (Avg. 183.0mm)
Apr 54.4mm (Avg. 170.8mm)
May 38.4mm (Avg. 133.6mm)
Jun 108.0mm (Avg. 139.1mm)
Jul 9.4mm (Avg. 78.7mm)
Total: 630.4mm (Oct-Jul Avg. 1349.1mm)
or 46.7% of average for that 10 month period

Yearly totals for 2006 and 2007 were similar to 2002 and 2003.
(Yearly Average: 1485.2mm)
2002: 1127.0mm
2003: 1221.6mm
2006: 1163.4mm
2007: 1046.8mm (just above the 10th percentile for yearly totals)
Driest on record: 814.5mm (1941)
Yearly totals less than 1000mm recorded in: 1940, 1941, 1944, 1960 & 1968.

If they were to stand alone, the 2002/03 drought would be worse than the 2006/07 drought in the local area.

However, what I think made 2006/2007 marginally worse than 2002/2003 locally was that the dry period extended over the summer of 06/07 and into the autumn of 07. Evaporation during those warmer months is stronger. Before the 'drought period', the autumn of 06 was very dry, with Apr and May of 06 below the 5th percentile (drier than the autumn of 07), thankfully good winter rainfall saved 06 from being a disaster. Autumn is normally our wettest season, closely followed by summer. Also, there had already been 6 years of below average yearly rainfall before 2006 (2000-2005, inclusive).

A bit off-topic, but an in-depth study of the Federation drought and the drought around the 1940s would be interesting. There's probably one out there somewhere, if I were to do a proper search.

To round out this off-topic drought discussion, I have actually shown Manilla quantitative data in this graph, previously posted here.



This is smoothed data, which purists may object to. However, the perils of using raw data are clear at the end of the graph. As I said at the time: "The raw rainfall anomaly value for July 2011 plots off the bottom of the graph. It will not be clear whether the current rainfall deficit is worse than that of 2002 for another six months at least."
The smoothed rainfall anomaly value for July 2011 shown, for example, on the top left graph here , far from being a severe drought, is as close to normal as it could be.

If you don't mind using smoothed monthly anomalies, you can see that there were four occasions when anomalies went below minus 10 mm per month, with peaks (troughs?) dated:
August 2002;
March 2005;
October 2006;
October 2009.

For time below -10 mm, the order was:
August 2002: Jan - Dec, 12 months;
October 2009: May - Mar('10), 11 months;
October 2006: June - Dec, 7 months;
March 2005: Feb - Apr, 3 months.

However, the only occasion when the minimum smoothed monthly anomaly went below -16 mm was in 2002, and then it went way down to -27 mm.

I plan to start a thread called "Quantified droughts", or some such title. If I do, I will link back to this discussion.

That can be avoided by expressing all drought rainfalls, whether for six months or sixty months, as percentiles.

April 2012 was a slightly warm dry month here, about +0.5 temp mean anomaly and -4mm deficit (57.3mm), so in fact almost normal. The plan is that May is also a little warm/dry but from June onwards I want cold/wet.

I guess its a tough call even for me which was worse drought 2002/3 or 2006/7. I think the end of 2006 was worse for a couple of reasons, it was extremely hot and it was already on the back of many dry years so even the same drought would have been worse. The real breaking of the drought was May/07 here, after that was on a gradual improve and has not returned since.

Anomalies of about +0.5C here too (Canterbury and Bankstown) which is a great effort considering most of the month was warm. Anomalies around that at Alice Springs also, which I regard as the barometer of continental heating. Bankstown goes back to 1969 which means this month isn't too warm by recent standards.

Rainfall totals were generally above average throughout the basin, whilst rain days were slightly below average at 9 days for Canterbury (average 10.5), but above average at Bankstown (11 days, average 9.1). With respect to rainfall in Sydney, "one swallow can make a summer" in that one big event can easily result in the average being reached and even exceeded, so it makes more sense to look at total rain days to judge how wet a month has been imo.

Actually, Alice Springs has fallen below average (for maximum temperatures) today! What an effort considering the insane heatwave before Easter.

Bathurst min almost spot on at 0.2 over (6.5 vs 6.3)
Max 0.9 over (21.5 vs 20.6)
Rain 29mm undey (12.2 vs 41.2)

So warmer days - mostly caused by early month heat.

Very dry month, although ytd we are still about 160mm up on avge (375 vs 217)

April in Manilla cloudy and wet

Most days had normal temperatures, but several were cool and overcast. Cold nights came during sunny spells, the coldest, on the 11th, being nine degrees below normal, but not a frost. Rain totalling 58.2 mm fell on seven rain days, mainly late in the month, with a maximum reading of 14.2 mm on the 24th.

All the mean temperatures were near normal, except that subsoil temperature was the highest for April on this record: 2.1 degrees above normal.
There were more cloudy days than recorded in earlier Aprils.
The rainfall total of 58.2 mm is well above the April average of 39.3 mm: it is in the 80th percentile. The total for March and April taken together (73.6 mm) is exactly on the average. As in March, totals for periods from five months to twenty-four months are still near record high values, and no totals up to the thirty-year total are below normal.

100.5mm for the month here at Jimboomba, SEQ. pretty good for april!

Rainfall in South West Rocks during April 2012:


- Above average rainfall was recorded during April, with 274.6mm falling. This is 103.8mm above the April average (Apr Avg. 170.8mm).
- It is the highest monthly total since June last year, when 631.2mm fell during that month.
- There were 17 rain days during April. (Apr Avg. 12.9 raindays)
- The highest daily fall during the month was 61.0mm, which fell on the 19th.
- One thunderstorm passed over South West Rocks during April, which occurred during the afternoon on the 2nd.
- Jan to Apr rainfall total is 733.8mm, which is 63.4mm above average (Jan-Apr Avg. 670.4mm).


Brief summary of April 2012 temperatures (LTA = Long-term Average):
April 2012 Avg. Max: 24.2ºC (LTA: 24.0ºC)
April 2012 Avg. Min: 16.8ºC (LTA: 16.6ºC)

Highest max this April: 28.1ºC (Apr 8th)
Lowest max this April: 17.9ºC (Apr 28th)
Highest min this April: 20.0ºC (Apr 8th)
Lowest min this April: 13.0ºC (Apr 11th)

Had 150mm of rain in 1 night here in Birkdale. My rain guage was overflowing so i have no idea how much I got all up.

117mm for me for april

I didn't even make 50% of average 14.1mm for me. Average is 35.9mm.

Stats from the western escarpment of Katoomba for April 2012
Ave min 8.6
Ave Max 16.4
NOAA mean temp - 12.0
rain 138mm
temps across the Central Tablelands were generally a little above normal in April - my maximums from April to September tend to read a little low compared to other stations in the CTs but I'm not sure my shelter & lack of exposure leads to any more misleading temps than BOM sites that are exposed to concrete / highways / airfields etc - just another microclimate really.
Still running a fairly significant negative temp anomaly in 2012 + we have had 1005mm of rain so far this year - looking forward to some dry weather.