Some weather averages

The catalyst for this post began with a view that it is much windier at Mallacoota this year than we have noticed in the past.  I then discovered a table of monthly averages including 9am windspeed.

Comparing the values for 2019 to date with the previous averages for Mallacoota shows that in fact this year is a little below past averages!

So I wondered whether the difference was due to comparison with Canberra.  An initial issue was that the current Canberra Airport data doesn't include the average windspeeds which I find astonishing - surely that would be a crucial measure for an airport.  However, nothing that Canberra Airport does - that might save them a few bucks - should surprise anyone.  Fortunately the data is available for the Airport Comparison site although it closed in 2010.  Yes, Mallacoota is windier!

While browsing the daily observations for Victoria on 9 April I noticed in passing that Wilson's Promontory had recorded a gust of 102kph.  Yowza!  So I looked up the average wind speeds for that location: for both 0900 and 1500 it is pretty much a steady 30kph through the year!  That is about double Mallacoota!

My second lot of averages are daily average temperatures for April.  I have calculated these from the BoM data on Maximum and Minimum temperatures for Mallacoota.  The catalyst for this was observing that for March the average mean temperatures hardly moved across the month.  Did the same apply to April?

No siree!  Whether one looks at the average for each day or the cumulative (ie month to date) series there is a pretty fair drop across the month,  Obviously, the cumulation process smooths the series out so has a higher correlation coefficient.

I have added in the daily values for 2019 which shows a pretty consistent high average.  That may be about to change, but thus far the difference between current mean temperature up to 7 April is 1.7C above the long term average.