July 2024 Weather Report

 A noticeably wet month.  The country all around is very waterlogged.  The temperatures were weird with cool to cold days but warm over night, with the balance being to warm (some species of birds and plants are behaving in ways that suggest overall warmth).

Rain

Overall my  Weather Station (WS) recorded 122.4mm for the month (verified by my plastic Nylex!).  This is 171% of the median fall for July and was the 9th highest fall recorded in July (out of 45 years for which I have records either at the Airport or my WS). As a basic comparison the month was a lot less than June 2024 but dramatically more than July 2023.

There were a lot of damp days!

Much of the weather was squally with isolated rain cells hitting more or less at random.  There were a few heavy falls as shown by rain rate.  The highest rate (96mm/hr) on the 16th was the 27th highest rate I have recorded (out of 1998 daily records).

The random nature of the falls is shown by the variation in monthly totals for some local Stations: as Gabo hasn't reported for a few days late in the month - and the seas have not been conducive for a BoM tech getting out there to fix it - data is not available there.  The last 3 stations are Wunderground sites.

Temperatures

After a cool start the temperature anomaly rose quickly and for most of the month oscillated around +0.5C, ending at +0.4C.

The extremes show the maximum mainly below the average for the date (with the exception of a very warm patch 22nd-23rd and the minimum above average until late in the month when it cooled somewhat.

An outcome of this pattern was a reduced daily temperature range.  The average daily range for July is 9.3C whereas for this year it was only 7.4C.  The range was wider than unusual (such a weird typo I have left it) usual only on 5 days of 31!

Minimum temperatures

On looking at my long term minimum temperature series I notice that many of the recent readings - from my WS - are above the earlier ones from the BoM Airport site.  This leads me to wonder if there is a difference due to topography and thus attempting to compare the two sets is dodgy.  As I now have 6 years of WS data for months up to July I will just show the 6 monthly annual series for comparison.

As expected the value of average minimum temperature (7.66C) is in the upper part of the range shown by these series.  

In terms of significant readings there were 9 readings I regarded as being significantly above the long term monthly average and only 1 reading (of 3.3C on the 27th) significantly below the long term monthly average.  Going forward, I shall recalculate the ling term averages restricting the average to the period since I opened my WS (2019).

Maximum Temperatures

While I have adjusted the BoM Maxima to allow for site differences, to give better consistency I shall also only use the WS series here.  Again as expected the value for average maximum (15.21C) was in the lower end of the range.

The significant readings are a very interesting mixture.  There are 8 readings significantly below the long term monthly average, with the lowest reading 10.5c being very significantly lower.  However there were also 4 readings later in the month significantly above the long term monthly average with the two highest (21.1C on the 22nd and  20.8C on the 23rd) being very significantly above.

Humidity

As might be expected with so many rainy days humidity was generally high.

The low value of rH on the afternoon of the 27th (43%)stands out sufficiently to look at the hourly values through the day.  It presents a believable pattern

Overall the values of both series across the month show it to be in the higher end of humidity for July, but not unbelievably so.

Wind 

My WS is not well exposed to wind and gave particularly low readings early in the month, about which I am suspicious,  However it seems to have shown satisfactory readings later and the 2 local wunderground stations also show low runs early in the month.  So perhaps it was just a calm period?