Discussion: Sydney's Weather

[RWood]

We get windchills much lower than 10 or 11 on some sunny winter days rainfan.... and the dampness factor is also important over a large tract of NZ in winter.

On the positive side here the sunshine total is racing ahead, 102.1 hrs in 19 days. Some brisk frostyish nights, but the negatively-vibed media will never point out the positive sunshine news.

[rainfan]

Quite dull today with thick cloud, quite mild with light-moderate N-NE winds , "calm before the storm tomorrow", 20-21 degrees across the MA including city & airport. Mild night in the city/east with low of 9 in city & 8 at airport, colder/lower in western suburbs with 1-2oC.

[rainfan]

Originally Posted by RWood

We get windchills much lower than 10 or 11 on some sunny winter days rainfan.... and the dampness factor is also important over a large tract of NZ in winter.

On the positive side here the sunshine total is racing ahead, 102.1 hrs in 19 days. Some brisk frostyish nights, but the negatively-vibed media will never point out the positive sunshine news.

Dampness is very common here during summer-autumn especially when it's raining; green slime will often form in outside places where it's wet & shaded from the sun, plenty of it at my workplace. Mould inside buildings is also common especially older ones like my workplace (built 1900), smell can be very strong during wet, humid spells & can last for months. Have 2 fans installed outside on the ground floor level wall to "suck" out the dampness from under the buildings; in use 24 hrs, many older buildings in the city have this.

I read that during 1997/1998 (?) - many electrical appliances blew up due to excessive moisture getting into components over the northern half of the NI.

Sunshine very rarely makes the news here (because we get so much of it, it's nothing amazing really) - usually rains/temps or extreme weather. I remember years ago in Melbourne, after a such cloudy/wet spell one December lasting 2 weeks; when blue skies finally appeared with the sun shining fully, it made the front page of the newspapers in Melbourne! , I had the clipping but unfortunately got lost during a move between houses .

164 hrs of sun here to end yesterday with only 6mm of rain - not a very good result so far. (Melbourne on 98 hrs). BTW mate called me recently from Melbourne, rained all day & freezing so checked the BOM page - temp hovered around 8oC in the city & 7oC at the airport nearly all day! , must be a very cold snap that one. Yesterday there were reports of reaching 15oC for the first time in 2 weeks; even described as being mild so if 15oC is termed mild then we know how cold it's been down there!.

[RWood]

Now up to 111.8 in 20 and today was virtually continuous sunshine. Some rain and poor weather expected Sat-Mon.

Yes, I've noted that Aussie media were always neglectful of sunshine, even in Melbourne and Hobart where values are more NZ-like.

Lots of comments about coldness in Aus. of late, but it's not too bad considering the La Nina effects. There shouldn't be any hurry to see extra warmth return considering some of the recent years. The Dandenongs guy is still a bit worried about the rainfall there even after some good showers. Perth Aero has had only 1mm rain since 2nd August and things could soon get serious there.

Our rainfall for Aug has tailed off a bit and we're still 43mm short of that 6-month record. My current bet is to fall just short, but a couple of nasty southerly days of the wetter rather than colder type may prove me wrong.

[rainfan]

Originally Posted by RWood

Now up to 111.8 in 20 and today was virtually continuous sunshine. Some rain and poor weather expected Sat-Mon.

Yes, I've noted that Aussie media were always neglectful of sunshine, even in Melbourne and Hobart where values are more NZ-like.

Lots of comments about coldness in Aus. of late, but it's not too bad considering the La Nina effects. There shouldn't be any hurry to see extra warmth return considering some of the recent years. The Dandenongs guy is still a bit worried about the rainfall there even after some good showers. Perth Aero has had only 1mm rain since 2nd August and things could soon get serious there.

Our rainfall for Aug has tailed off a bit and we're still 43mm short of that 6-month record. My current bet is to fall just short, but a couple of nasty southerly days of the wetter rather than colder type may prove me wrong.

Tying to remember which December it was; trawled the Melbourne database; found it - it was 1992; monthly total was only 167 with just 53 hrs from the 12th to 27th. Only 5 days had daily totals over 10 hours. (Cloudiest ever Dec. was 1936 with 152). Out of interest September of the same year had just 105 hrs; cloudiest Sept. on record.

That's one thing I miss about Melbourne at times - the cloudiness but wouldn't live there again due to too little rains, Sydney wins hands down in terms of heavy "rains"

[RWood]

In NZ, Dec 1992 marked the end of a 4-month period which was easily the cloudiest on record for a whole lot of North Island stations, plus Nelson and Marlborough. It was also a very cool period apart from a mild November (in which month we had a rather sun-starved holiday trip around the NI to celebrate long-service leave). It was this, plus a lack of sunnier than normal months in the rest of the year that saw the NI have its cloudiest year by a comfortable margin. In October, Takaka's 114 hrs was about 100 short of the mean. Kelburn was about 225 hrs short of its longterm mean over these 4 months. This was all supposed to be a downstream effect of Pinatubo aerosols combined with an El Nino, but for some reason the rest of the SI suffered much less, and some parts were even sunnier than average (though it was cold everywhere).

In January 1993 sunshine returned to normal or a little above and it seemed so good by comparison to what had gone before that I thought temps. were near normal - they were about 1.5C below!! A case of getting used to the cold.

[rainfan]

1992 (1910 hrs) was particularly a cloudy year for Melbourne; only July exceeded the average. The cloudy epoch started in December 1991 & didn't end until January 1994. (Only April, October & November of 1993 were sunnier than usual), this coincidenced with a particularly wet period of years; as much as 200mm above normal; Sept-Dec 1992 being much so with each month recording totals over 106m to 140mm.

[ATO2]

Yeh I remember that year. I recorded the temperatures and rainfall on the farm between 1989 and 1994.
1992 was a terrible year for growth at Cape Egmont. Winter temperatures were about a half degree below what we would have expected. One can expect Mean Daily Minima of about 7 and Maxima of 14 throughout the three Winter months. Trouble was that May and September were the same as the Winter months. Also March and April and October were way below normal as well!
So we got this:
March: 10.8/18.2 (expect 14/21)
April: 8.2/15.5 (expect 12/19)
May: 7.1/13.8 (expect 10/16)
June: 6.9/13.0 (expect 7/14)
July: 7.6/13.2 (expect 7/14)
August: 6.5/12.9 (expect 7/14)
September: 7.0/13.8 (expect 9/15)
October: 9.0/15.5 (expect 10/16)

[RWood]

That suggests Melbourne was somewhat in synch. with the NI in 1992, though 1993 - a cool year but significantly warmer than 1992 (which was the coldest year for NZ since 1945) - had near-normal sunshine in the NI. 1993 was also rather dryish over a good portion of NZ.

[RWood]

For Feb 1992 to Oct 1992 inclusive, the average temp. deficit (cf. average 1971-2000) for NZ was just over 1.2C.

On checking, 1993 was only 0.2C warmer than 1992, so it was a slow recovery.