Mallacoota Weather Report March 2026

 A major event was a huge storm over March 27-28.  Mallacoota and Gabo get a mention in this post (I think on Facebook) from BoM:

28 March 2026  Bureau of Meteorology 

A low pressure system sitting off the south-east coast of NSW yesterday brought damaging winds and large surf to south-east New South Wales and eastern Victoria.

Some of the strongest recorded wind gusts include  

•      118 km/h at Green Cape NSW and Mallacoota, Vic 
•         ...
•         113 km/h at Thredbo NSW and Gabo Island, Vic 

I have put some images in another blogpost but here is the view at the height of the storm on the 27th.

Technology

A general comment is that after about 15 years my Davis Weather Station appears to have reached its use by date.  The rain collector seems to have stopped working and in discussion with a person at Instrument Choice (from whom I bought it) the situation seems to be that it is a motherboard problem.  He noted that:

• The expected life of a system is 5 - 10 years (so I am well in front); and 
• Typically when one component fails the others do in short order (which I had noticed with a cheaper station before I got the Davis).

So I have acquired a rather cheaper replacement, in the expectation that we will probably be moving full time to Melbourne within a relatively brief time. The new device is an Ecowitt IC3900 costing less than half a new Davis Vantage Vue.  It will also connect to the Wunderground network so I can access data while we are in Melbourne under the current arrangement.  I intend to connect the new device sometime in the last 2 days of March.

This may mean that some of the data is on one system and other bits are on the new system but it all comes through Excel spreadsheets so shouldn't matter too much.  Rainfall stopped happening around 8 March so data for the rest of the month comes from BoM until we returned on 25 March and then from my Nylex.

In the event it came to happen that 2nd April was installation day.  It only took 3 hours including a few phone calls to Instrument Choice where Bang Hoang was very patient and knowledgeable and one to Aussie Broadband who were very helpful.  Here is the story.

Rainfall

I shall not include detail here due to the mixed nature of the records described above.

Total rainfall at Angophora Drive for March is estimated as 136.9mm somewhat more than was recorded by BoM at the Airport site (127.6mm) or on Gabo Island(105.6mm).  However my estimate for the big storm event (106mm) is comparable with totals collected by other residents in the town area.  This suggests an orographic component to the falls.  

My prorata estimate for the annual fall at 1432 mm is above the estimates at the end of March for the previous two years.

Temperatures

At the end of the month the temperature anomaly was 0.36.  The range of values of the anomaly over the month was very low.

As would be expected from the values of the anomaly the daily extremes are mainly close to the averages for the day.

In summary the temperatures for the month were pretty normal for the month.  Certainly the begetation growth around the garden has been very strong

Minimum temperatures

The lowest minimum for the month was 7.9^o C on the 14th.  Overall the average minimum was 15.68^o C a little above long term mean but about the middle of the pack for recent years.

Maximum Temperatures

The highest maximum was 32.5^o C on the 11th. Overall the average maximum was 24.05^o C, again a little above long term mean but about the middle of the pack for recent years.

Humidity

A rather muggy month.  The chart of daily relative humidity for the standard times of 0900 hrs and 1500 hrs is somewhat interesting.  Several of the afternoon reading are 96% which is very high for that time (they are higher than the morning reading  for the same day) and hardly any of the afternoon readings are less than 50%.

The average reading for both times are about 5% above average and second only to March 2022 of the years since 2019.  Plotting the values of rH against rainfall is somewhat dodgy in view of the estimated nature of the rain data, but here is a scatterplot.

The rain tended to occur on days with higher 1500 rH, but some very humid days had no rain!  I looked at the BoM data (which was on a more consistent basis) and it showed a somewhat similarly confused situation.

Wind

There were a few windy periods recorded but the main value of this chart is to show how sheltered my WS site is for wind from the South.  

The longest run recorded was on the 24th, not the 27th, and came in at 226km.  This the 15th highest (out of 248) record for a March day.

Tempest Data

These data come from a friend's WS located near the wharf, and connected to the Tempest system.

Lightning

The number of strikes in the system includes data from a range of sources, covering a 40km radius from the actual WS site.  It would have included a lot of these strikes (recorded on 25 March) which lit up this area but did not lead to any strikes close to Mallacoota (nor any fires).

The number of strikes in the 40km radius for each month are shown in this chart.

While this compares 2026 with an average. Note that I have excluded February 2025 from the average as it included 6,941 strikes which is a definite outlier.

Solar radiation

A very seasonal series.  The moving average -brown removes the seasonal influence giving an almost flatline.  [Note for the future: As my new WS includes a facility to measure radiation I will be including that in future reports.]

 

Storm Snaps 260327

These are some photos from a short drive around from Betka to Mullet Creek.  The first image was taken as 1327 on 27 March.  The sea at Betka was rather rough and running over the sandbank: however the bank held until at least the next day.

Much material on Betka road.

At Bastion Point the area beyond the breakwater was covered in foam, but this was simply the results of the wild sea not an algal bloom.

A wild sea!

All the work last year seems to have done a job of protecting the breakwater from the swells by getting the break further out..

In the recent past this would have smashed into the face of the breakwater rather than having broken some metres earlier.  Lets see if the wall survived.

Much white water towards the Mouth.

Lots of vegetation down.  (Power was out from 1136 on 27th until 1426 on 28th.)m These images are on Lakeside Drive.

Angophora Drive.

The weather was stirring up the fruit bats at Mullet Creek.  (They flew out well on 28th.)

The marsh near Fisheries Jetty had very little water visible early on the 27th.  By midday on the 28 the combination of 100mm of rain and a Southerly driving water through the Mouth had got the water level up again.

Weather Report February 2026

The statistics for the month suggest it was an average month, in that most metrics come out close to the mean.  My subjective view is that is close to average, in the sarcastic sense of close to "ordinary".  It is possible this is flavoured by the last few days of the month having 8/8 cloud, 24/7.

Rain

We ended the month with 63.8 mm at my Weather Station (WS) at Angophora Drive,  This compares with BoM records of 77.8 mm at the airport and 62.8 mm at Gabo Island.  My WS data is 130% of median for the month and after 2 months we are at 122% of the median YtD.

My pro-rata estimate of fall for the year is showing something similar to the usual pattern, although without such a pronounced early peak.  At the end of the month the estimate for the year is 1165 mm.

Temperatures

The month started off much below average and the anomaly (current average - long term mean) then rose to hover close to 0^o C for the last 2 weeks of the month

The history of the anomaly shows a very variable series (blue line) with a strong seasonal element which is evened out by the 12 month moving average (red line).  The trend is still heading down.

The chart of daily extremes for the month is basically below average with a few high spikes.  

It is a much less unpleasant than the heat wave experienced in more Western areas, as evidenced by this chart comparing maxima at Mallacoota with those from Walpeup ...

 ... in the centre of the Mallee.

In Mallacoota there were 3 days, scattered across the month with both minimum and maximum significantly above average, but no runs of this rating.  Also, no days with significantly below average for both readings.

Minimum Temperatures

The average minimum for the month at my WS was 15.79^o C approximately 0.4^o C below the average for the month at that site.  This continues to keep the series for 2026 at the bottom of the range.

Early in the month we had cool spells with 2 minima significantly below average and 4 very significantly below average.  The lowest temperature recorded for the month was 8.9^o C on the 3rd, the lowest February temperature recorded there.  Including readings for the (usually colder) BoM airport site there were 6 lower February minima.  There were 6 days with minima significantly above average, but none were very significantly above. 

Maximum Temperatures

The average maximum for the month was 24.6^o C,  0.2^o C below the average for the month at my WS.  This places 2026 in the middle of the range for February.  

The maximum at my WS for the month was 33.5^o C on the 22nd: in total 4 days were significantly above average.  No maxima were significantly below average.

Humidity

The chart of daily humidity readings for standard times is highly variable.  The afternoon reading on the 4th was very low for this area .  The high readings at both times from the 23rd onwards match up with the period of perpetual cloud.

The time series of readings at my WS shows this month to be about normal'

Wind

A couple of rather windy period with runs longer than 200 kms

Overall the average run of 107 km was below average, and well short of the run in 2025.

Tempest Data

These data come from a friends site, close to the Wharf and include a couple of variables my station doesn't collect.

Lightning

This covers a 40 km radius and includes information from a range of other systems as well as my friend's site.  The number of strikes has a very large range so I have used a logarithmic range (log 10=1, log 1,000 = 3.0).  There have been a lot of strikes in recent months with February totalling 2248.

Solar Radiation

In view of the cloud in the last week of the month I had expected the radiation to be very low.  Our solar water heater ran up the white flag after 3 days!  However looking at the totals, average solar radiation this month was higher than 2 of the 4 years for which I had data and the highest daily reading this month was top..

Back from 505

 We are now back in Mallacoota with a very easy drive, taking less than 6 hours.  Frances commented on the boring stretch between Stratford and Bairnsdale that she almost missed having to think about overtaking on the passing lanes!  We also noted that there seemed to be many more boats than caravans being towed, although that changed back for the last leg from Cann River to Mallacoota (where some folk seem to have been confused about which they had).

That is from a FB post, and not seen by me!

At 1030 on the 22nd this was posted to FB (the crane came from Bairnsdale).

Going back to the 21st, in the evening I was still short of a new bird for the day so went to Mullet Creek  where I heard a Brown Gerygone.  I also saw a few Grey-headed Flying Foxes, but not a dense camp (yet).

Later in the evening the sky got a bit of colour for the moon to nestle in!

This is a panorama shot, which my phone handled quite well.

The main colour was on the Western end of the sky.