Carwoola Weather report February 2017

This report is a mixture of my observations and some from Anthea's site to cover the period after the fire when power loss and battery failure caused some gaps in my data.  I reckon the picture is OK, as far as it goes, which is rain and temperature.  I'll start with updating the Gazette-format report: as it was submitted a couple of days early and on very partial data the hard copy has been changed more than usual.

Rainfall

What is this stuff called rain?  Neither the January nor February totals are the lowest recorded, but as a 2 month period the only lower value is the first full year for which we have records, 1985.  

Clearly the only positive from this is that February 2017 is not that far behind the miserable value for the same period in 2016.  

Temperatures

Obviously we had a lot of warm maxima but at least there were cool overnight temperatures.

The average maximum temperature at 29.2^oC was an insignificant amount above average and below last year.

The average minimum 12.2^oC was a bit above both average and last year.  While there was much fuss made in the media about the cold minima in Canberra on the 21st our reading of 3^oC was a pussy cat compared to the frosts of -2^oC recorded in 1996 and 1998.

Let us finish off with heat waves.  I define a heat wave as being 3 or more days with a maximum above 30^oC and a minimum above 10^oC.  I count the number of days meeting those criteria.

February 2017 was above average for the number of heat days in February but well below 2016.  I should note that the 17th was not part of a heat wave as there were only 2 consecutive days above 30^oC; it was just damn hot and windy.

" Summer"

My definition of Summer doesn't end for another month.  However this article in the SMH may be of interest for the official definition.  I'm particularly glad I wasn't in Moree.  Here is the Canberra version.