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20th Feb 2008 Rain.

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Finally a break in the groundhog style day in day out conditions of ridging highs. A cyclone in NW Western Australia and a weak front. The lead up to the change was your typical summer heat with the 18th equaling my hottest day of the year thus far at 34.6 degrees. This top was shared with the 4th Jan for the 2008 statistics. The nighttime minimum was however my warmest night of the year to date dropping to an uncomfortable 20.3 degrees! The 19th was also quite warm making a top of 32.9 degrees. The change arrived bringing a much welcome drop in temp and by midnight had dropped below 20 degrees. The radar also looked promising with a band of rain moving across from the west. Well this looked alright!

It started raining down south around midnight of the 19th and into the 20th. Gentle moderate/light falls. This continued till mid morning the 20th when it finally stopped leaving a fantastic and unexpected 11.5mm in the gauge! The biggest 24 hour fall in almost 2 months!!! But this was not widespread. The Adelaide plains and indeed even the hills north of Meadows were lucky to get even 1mm. Down south, especially Kangaroo Island where some falls above 20mm were recorded fared much better. The rain band was narrow with the cloud and moisture streaming in all the way from ex TC Nicholas in NW WA. The satellite image to the left well illustrates this. A very welcome respite for some from the dry conditions while frustration continues for others.

Feb 2008 as average as you can get

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While others were suffering unseasonally high temperatures and very much below average rainfall down in the Southern Ranges and Fleurieu we took a trip right down the middle of average! It was still an incredibly boring month in the most intensely boring "storm season" I can remember. Rainfall for me came in at 26.4mm. The long term average is 27mm. The temps were very much the same. See the statistics as collected by my WX below.

March swelters in record breaking heatwave

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The run of coolish but comfortable summer conditions could not last. In fact the time for the change was really the 1st of March as temps rose to the mid twenties after a fortnight of low twenties, high teens. The 2nd hit 28 in the hills and 31 in the city. The forecast was atrocious with the week in advance progged to be in the mid to high 30's. The 3rd rose above 30 in the hills and moreso on the plains. It was all downhill from there.
By the 7th it had topped 36 at my place. This was the hottest march day I have yet to record. (record #1) It is also the second hottest day for the year to date for me. Only beaten by 36.9 on the 10th January. Its also the only time I have recorded 2 consecutive days over 35 in march (record#2) and has equaled my record 5 straight days above 30 degrees for March. But look at this forecast issued on the 8th...

Saturday (8th) Dry. Hot. Sunny. Max 39
Sunday Dry. Mostly sunny. Min 22 Max 39
Monday Dry. Mostly sunny. Min 23 Max 37
Tuesday Dry. Sunny. Min 18 Max 34
Wednesday Dry. Sunny. Min 20 Max 36
Thursday Dry. Sunny. Min 20 Max 37
Friday (14th) Dry. Sunny. Min 28 Max 39

This could not be worse and will bake an already seriously moisture denuded landscape. Its certainly going to smash apart any of my heat records and time will tell what it does to other locations in SA. I will update this as the heatwave progresses

Nothing good comes from summer conditions this extreme. NOTHING. DISCALINMER:Yes I do hate summer its no secret

UPDATE 10th March (Monday)

The records continue to tumble for my location. A record consecutive days above 35 degrees plus more!

See the data to the right for the run of days above 35 that I have recorded at this location. On only 3 occasions have temperatures risen above 35 degrees for 3 consecutive days. I have never recorded 4 days above 35. As well its worth considering that all these hot conditions have occurred during the heat of summer, if you can excuse the pun. Here is where we smash all these old records out the door and over the fence for 6. The heatwave now reads like this.. 06.03.2008 35.1 (16:12) 07.03.2008 36.0 (15:02) 08.03.2008 36.0 (14:40) 09.03.2008 36.0 (16:32) 10.03.2008 36.1 (14:33) Yes that's right 5 days over 35 (record #3) and 4 in a row at or above 36!!! (record #4) Amazing stuff. A cool wind change arrived late in the evening on the 10th and bought with it a massive drop in temperature to give a huge greater than 20 degree variation for the day.

Conditions forecast for the 11th may just break this incredible run of temps locally. But the remainder of the week is looking to be in mid to high 30's yet again. Even warmer for the plains. More updates to follow.

UPDATE 11th March (Tuesday)

A slightly cooler day for us in the ranges and the record run above 35 is broken for us. A top of 32.6 bought us oh so close! Even cooler by the coast with just mid twenties. The day started with a pea soup fog that persisted until 10am leaving puddles under tree drip lines.

It was a different story in the city where sweltering high 30's temperatures set a new autumn record of consecutive days over 35 since records began! (record #5) To quote weatherzone -
Adelaide heatwave the longest in recorded history
James Luffman, Tuesday March 11, 2008 - 12:59 EDT
By almost any measure the extended heatwave currently affecting the south of the country is the longest since temperature records began over 120 years ago, according to weatherzone.com.au
Adelaide has reached a maximum temperature of 35 degrees or more each day since the third of this month, today taking the run to nine consecutive days. This sets a new autumn record for the southern capital, where temperature records commenced in 1887.On Thursday it is likely Adelaide’s run of 35 degree days will reach 11 – beating the longest for any month previously set during the heatwave of January 1939, which included the notorious ‘Black Friday’ bushfire disaster across southeast Australia.
No significant cool change is likely to bring relief to the heat across South Australia until at least the middle part of next week.- Weatherzone © Weatherzone 2008

Adelaide's average maximum temperature for the first 11 days of March is a shocking 36 degrees. 10 degrees above average!! And the forecast for the following 7 days just gets worse -

Wednesday     Dry. Clear.                            Min 20    Max 38
Thursday      Dry. Sunny.                            Min 24    Max 39
Friday        Dry. Windy.                            Min 28    Max 39
Saturday      Dry. Partly cloudy.                    Min 20    Max 38
Sunday        Dry. Sunny.                            Min 21    Max 38
Monday        Dry. Sunny.                            Min 23    Max 39
Tuesday       Dry. Sunny.                            Min 25    Max 39 

This is incredible! If it comes to fruition Adelaide will have suffered through an all time record of 16 consecutive days above 35. For any month this beggars belief, but for March!!

Surprisingly a number of severe thunderstorms developed over the mid north during the afternoon of the 11th prompting an STA from the BOM. Radar imagery was impressive showing a short lived but intense black cored cell over Yacka. As always and ever typical it was hot and blue down south. These thunderstorms also occured again on the 12th and in much the same locations. A fire started by lightning burned 30Ha of scrub near Williamstown.

UPDATE 13th March (Thursday)

Winds and temps conbined to create one of the worse fire danger periods in years. The countryside has been solidly baked and is tinder dry. The scenario no-one wanted sadly came to fruition. But more on this later. First the temperature records.

Adelaide yet again rose above 35 on the 13th (and 12th for that matter). In fact Adelaide made 39.7 degrees on Thursday afternoon making an unprecedented 11 consecutive days over 35 degrees! This is the new benchmark breaking the Australian capital city heat wave record of 10 days, recorded in Perth in February 1988. A dubious honour indeed!! (record #6) There is hope on the new forecast issued on the 13th. But not before we are all baked to a cinder!!

Friday        Dry. Mostly sunny.                     Min 28    Max 40
Saturday      Dry. Mostly sunny.                     Min 20    Max 38
Sunday        Dry. Mostly sunny.                     Min 21    Max 38
Monday        Dry. Sunny.                            Min 23    Max 39
Tuesday       Dry. Increasing cloud.                 Min 25    Max 39
Wednesday     Possible shower.                       Min 20    Max 31
Thursday      Possible shower.                       Min 20    Max 27

To fires. The afternoon saw a fire (suspected it was deliberately lit) start near Willunga in the Southern Ranges. It very rapidly spread up through the steep gullies, jumped roads, destroyed a house and injured 2 firefighters. By the evening it was held within containment lines thanks to the efforts of fighters, water bombers and elvis. But will it stay there? Friday the 14th has the potential to be the worse day of extreme fire danger in a decade. Keep watching this space for updates....

UPDATE 18th March (tuesday)

ITS OVER! The cool breeze has arrived. The temperatures have dropped! The graph to the right shows the last day of heat and the long slow cool down. For me this is the end of an amazing 15 consecutive days over 31 degrees, this includes 5 consecutive days over 35, and 4 consecutive days over 36. The period from the 3rd to the 17th had an INCREDIBLE average maximum temperature of 34.6 degrees and av min of 18 degrees!!! The above are records for me. Not just march records but records for ANY time of the year! Its so comprehensively smashed all previous recordings that it is a climactic aberration that will go down in history! Thats right, we have lived through a never to be forgotten historical event!

Below is the run of temps from the 1st to 18 of March. My location on the left, Adelaide on the right.

An incredible 15 consecutive days above 35 for Adelaide. Even moreso an unprecedented Australian Capital city record of 13 days above the old 100 degree farenheight scale (37.8 degreesC). OMG!!

This has been reported as a "one in 3 thousand year event". Scientists working on a climate modelling have come to the conlusion that chances of this event occurring in Adelaide are 1 every 3 thousand years!! Read the rest of the media release here. That is quite a statement indeed. However even if only half correct it truly highlights the importance of this event. Its worth at this point quoting Blair Trewin of the BOM who puts this into a perspective.

" Obviously the error bars on a 3000-year return period are large, but
this event is so far outside recorded experience that any reasonable
estimate of its return period is something well beyond the 120 years
of existing data. Not only is the run of 35+ days nearly double the
previous record, but there haven't been any near-misses in the sense
of six 35+ days, then a 34, then siz more 35+ days - indeed until
2004 there hadn't even been a run of 15 days over 30"

Just to bring us back into national perspectives a bit. Consider the Australian record of 160 consecutive days above 100 degrees F (37.8 C) which Marble Bar in Western Australia suffered. Now thats a heatwave!!

LAST UPDATE!

The BOM have compiled a summary of the heatwave across Southern Australia. Its amazing. Download the PDF here.
MANY thanks to Blair Trewin from the Bureau of Meteorology for his work on this document.

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