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 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 with a strong seasonal element which is evened out by the 12 month moving average.  Despite the slight uptick in that average 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.

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.

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 variable 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 friends 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..