Rainfall (or lack thereof)

At the start of this month (January 2012) I checked the 28 Day rainfall forecast on the Elders site.   The image it generated was very similar to this one (from 27 January):
However when my friend Denis sought my view about rainfall a bit east of here I had to answer that I really didn't know since it seemed that we has had no rain when it has bucketted down in Canberra and that they had had none when we had accumulated the pittance that has arrived since Christmas.  I tried to get some further information about the area he was particularly interested in from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) climate data pages but all the small stations seem to report at the end of the month rather than daily.  (That is my interpretation of the lack of information for January 2012 for all except the automatic stations.)

In separate conversations with other folk a common comment is that the forecasters keep talking about showers and storms but they have never arrived.  So I thought I would get a bit of data and see what is going on. My records are in the first column while BoM data for three automatic stations gives an idea of the variation around the area.


Date Carwoola Airport Tuggeranong Braidwood  race course
1-Jan
0 0 0
2-Jan
0 0 0.2
3-Jan
0 0 0
4-Jan
0 0
5-Jan
0 0 0.4
6-Jan
0 0 0.6
7-Jan
0 0 0.2
8-Jan 6.7 3.8 1.4 3
9-Jan
1.2 0.2 0.4
10-Jan
0 0 0
11-Jan
0 0 0
12-Jan
0.4 0.6 0
13-Jan
0 0 0
14-Jan
0 0.4 0.2
15-Jan
0 0.6 0.2
16-Jan
0 0.2 0
17-Jan
0 0 0.2
18-Jan
0 0 0
19-Jan
0 0 0.4
20-Jan 2.5 0 0 0
21-Jan
24.2 42.2 3.8
22-Jan 2.0 0.2 2 1.2
23-Jan
0 0 2
24-Jan
0.2 0 0
25-Jan
0 0 0.2
26-Jan
0 0.2 0
Total 11.2 30.0 47.8 13.0
Raindays 3 6 9 14
My own record keeping is not on exactly the same rigorous 9am - 8:59am daily routine as the BoM stations which may account for a small amount of the variability, but the table shows that we have had falls on less days than any of the other 3 stations and particularly that we missed the big storm on the 21st.  Braidwood, closer to Denis's area of interest has had many more damp days but achieved a similar modest total to us.

In the meantime, NE NSW is getting flooded again.  So far in January Coffs harbour has received 320mm over 14 days.  Possibly it is moving down the Coast in which case we could get a bit starting Sunday!

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