My first post since last week from here in Belgrave. Pardon my absence, I've been very busy, and I'm currently recovering from nose surgery which happened last Friday.
Wednesday February 14th 2018Low: 19.6°C High: 27.2°C Rain: TRACE
Thursday February 15th 2018Low: 11.8°C High: 25.4°C Rain: TRACE
Friday February 16th 2018Low: 14.7°C High: 27.6°C Rain: TRACE
Saturday February 17th 2018Low: 9.7°C High: 32.6°C Rain: 0mm
Sunday February 18th 2018Low: 12.0°C High: 32.0°C Rain: 0mm
Monday February 19th 2018Low: 15.7°C High: 24.7°C Rain: 1.0mm
Tuesday February 20th 2018Low: 12.6°C High: 30.9°C Rain: 0mm
By and large, it's been a continuation of the generally stable and very, VERY dry late-summer weather of recent weeks, but with a bit more variety tossed in. The mornings in particular have felt almost autumnal recently, being quite chilly at times, with generally warm to hot afternoons to follow.
Very wild temperature gyrations over the course of 24-48 hours in response to the strong cold front that swept through on Wednesday February 14th! Kinda reminded me of a stormy cold front in springtime.
Following the hot, dry, breezy top of 34.1°C on Tuesday February 13th, strengthening, gale-force northerly wind ahead of the impending cold front caused the temperature to dip to only 19.6°C that night, before rebounding to around 23°C after sunrise.
In the 1-2 hour window prior to the passage of the cold front itself, several waves of fast-moving, locally heavy showers and thunderstorms swept through or else brushed by. The most significant of these waves of stormy weather was a developing squall line, which side-swiped us just barely to the south around 8:30am. It was very dark with impressive cumulonimbus cloud development, and I heard a few occasional rumbles of thunder (I didn't see any lightning), but we only copped a few dozen spits of rain as the northern tail of the storm front rushed eastwards above us. The heaviest precipitation and most dangerous weather was to the south and southeast of Belgrave.
The temperature dropped sharply following the cold front which struck at 9am, bottoming out at 16.2°C around an hour later. Conditions remained overcast for a several hours after the front and preceding shower and thunderstorm had moved on (with only a couple more spits of rain after 9am), before mostly sunny skies followed from lunchtime right throughout the afternoon and the temperature climbed back to 27.2°C. Showers continued to sweep through the coastal areas further south of metropolitan Melbourne.
But it was very, VERY windy throughout the day (at least until the evening), with lots of tree limbs down, some of which were quite large (a few small trees were also uprooted), and the air tinged by a dirty, dusty haze!
A second cold front brushed by late on Thursday February 15th, bringing breezy conditions but only a very gradual change in wind direction. The day overall was warm, humid and mostly cloudy, but with plenty of sunshine until around mid-afternoon; light showers then occurred until dinnertime.
Conditions were gloomy and almost winter-like early in the morning on Friday February 16th in the wake of the cold front, but the afternoon was quite pleasing with abundant warm sunshine and clear skies!
A rather cold night was followed by a rather hot, mostly sunny afternoon on Saturday February 17th. High cloud was in response to a third cold front to the southwest that was interacting with a trough reaching south through WA from Ex-Tropical Cyclone Kelvin over the Pilbara region.
A temperature spread of exactly 20 degrees occurred on Sunday February 18th (low of 12.0°C, high of 32.0°C) before the cold front and associated trough moved through that night. The day itself was mostly sunny, before cloud increased with rain sweeping through overnight. The rain was very nice to hear on the roof and sounded quite heavy around 1am in the morning on Monday February 19th, but ceased not long after 2am. Only 1mm collected, and no thunderstorm activity resulted unfortunately.
It was mostly dry weather for the remainder of Monday February 19th as a high pressure system (centered over or near Tasmania) followed the cold front and trough.
However the high ended up being "squeezed" on three sides during the afternoon and evening: to the north by the trough which had swung into NSW/ACT and Queensland; to the east by the cold front which had raced into the Tasman Sea and began interacting with Tropical Cyclone Gita which was heading down through the South Pacific towards New Zealand; and to the west/northwest by Ex-Tropical Cyclone Kelvin and another associated trough dipping south over WA!
As a result, a very tight pressure gradient developed over Bass Strait. This whipped up dangerous gale-force easterly/southeasterly winds across parts of Victoria during the afternoon and evening! My highest gust was clocked at 46.4km/h, and we had a large tree limb come down on our property but fortunately without causing damage, with blackouts occurring nearby.
The winds eased early this morning (Tuesday February 20th). The day was hot and sunny, although high cloud started spreading over the western horizon from the northwest in response to Ex-Tropical Cyclone Kelvin and the associated trough heading southeast through WA and Outback SA into the Bight.
At the last check it was around 17°C.
It's been around 2 weeks since our last dangerous heatwave. We hit 42.1°C on Wednesday February 7th, but haven't reached or exceeded 35°C since then. Despite the fact that conditions in the past couple of weeks have been generally quite pleasing, as well as that we've had a bit of variety tossed in (including storms and blustery winds), and even with a bit of humidity, the ground is very dry and we now face a nasty bushfire risk!
We've recorded only 1mm of rain this month. And unless Ex-Tropical Cyclone Kelvin or some other major weather system can deliver us a major rain event and possible storm outbreak between now and the end of the month then February 2018 will go down in my books as my driest month of all time, beating January 2015 which during which I measured a mere 3.2mm (but that was in large part due to me being in Corryong and Merimbula for much of the time).
Based on my records, the average February rainfall is about 65mm. We're going to need a
HUGE amount of precipitation to make it to even 50mm!
Latest forecasts of have between 15-20mm for us between Friday and Monday, better than nothing but still not enough!
I'm just glad the first two months of Summer 2017/2018 have been nice and wet, with 177mm in December and 61.1mm in January. Such a pity February hasn't followed suit. The 29.5mm I collected on January 30th seems to be distant memory now.
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