Saturday, 19 January 2019

Wild Weather

January is statistically the wettest month of the year in Armidale, which gathers rain from the warm waters of Australia's east coast mixing with occasional fronts coming through from the south-west. Average rainfall is c. 104.5 mm (or c. 4 inches).

This January there has been hardly any rain where we live, though fleeting storms passed east and west of us. Worse still, it has been unusually hot with daily maxima mostly ranging from 28 C to 37 C, especially in the last week. That compares with a January average of just 27 C. Our lawn was rapidly turning brown as the result of both heat and lack of water and Dot was beginning to lose some of her lovely plants, whether in the garden or in various pots that dot our patios - apologies for the pun!

Anyway, today repeated the usual weather pattern we've been experiencing, with the maximum reaching 36 c ... or almost 40 C when I got into one of our cars in late afternoon. At 5.30 pm the weather was still hot and sunny, but then a few dark clouds began to appear. Just after 6 pm thunder, air to ground lightening, and the patter of rain began to envelop us as we looked on in amazement. And then the rain began to fall faster and faster. Within about 45 minutes we received over 40 mm (1.6 inches) of rain or roughly 40% of the January average. It was torrential - about the heaviest I've ever seen and marvelous for our garden. In the last week I had watered our lawn and shrubs with our sprinkler systems and that gave us some of the greenest grass around.

Our friendly neighbourhood birds, and especially the magpies (Pied Currawongs) loved this watering because the rest of our neighbourhood had grass with consistency of concrete. They spent hours pecking at our lawn for various grubs, but never flew away as I approached. Instead, they looked up with the equivalent of a smile on their faces saying "thanks for your efforts on our behalf".

AS


No comments: