It's as dry as a dead dingo's donga

[John B]

Fair dinkum it's dry around here. If it gets any dryer my Scotch will evaporate in the bottle before I can take off the top.

Our last decent rainfall was on 2017-06-09 when we received 27.9 mm of precipitation. Since then it's been a bit dry.

1.1 mm the next day and then nothing until the 28th (0.8 mm). A few days later, on 2017-07-03 0.5 mm arrived. On the very last day of July 8.4 mm was recorded. August produced 10.0 mm (8.5 mm arriving on the third day of the month and 0.5 mm on the 15th 17th and 27th).
September gave us 1.5 mm on the 13th.
If you add up all that it means that in four months since 2017-06-09 we have had ten days of recorded rainfall. That's over 120 days (roughly one third of a year) with only 21.5 mm of drips and drops.

A week's worth of steady, not flooding, rain would be most welcome.

[wx_jon]

Opposite end of the world here, and very different climate...

In Seattle, USA, at the official airport station, we set an all-time record (since 1880) for driest astronomical summer – 0.50 in (12.5 mm). Between 16 June and 15 Sept, 91 days, my station recorded a meager 0.18 in (4.6 mm). Also see my blog post about the records.

All that in the USA's "rainy city"!!

So yep, I get it.

[John B]

Sorry, I thought I'd answered your comments. Obviously I had not.

July, August and September tend to be dry at my location, Jon. That, of course, does not apply countrywide as, like yours, it's a combination of a plethora of local climates. My concern now is only that we are heading into summer in a few weeks and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the site is surrounded by millions of eucalypti (gum) trees. Ergo, come summer - and even now -, bushfires. I think you call them wild or forest fires on the west coast. Having been through more than a few over the last (too many) decades, I feel for your compatriots down south at this horrible time. Hopefully WA is not affected.

Those records, by-the-way, make rather dry reading.

[weather display]

its looking more and more likely that La Nina is developing
that should mean more rain for Queensland over the summer and some of that might spill into NSW

on this side of the tasman, we have had the wettest year in a long time here
and are just about to have our wettest October on record (if this rain we are getting now can give us another 5mm, to make 177mm)

[John B]

It is indeed, Brian (the El Niña trend).

The dry spell here has finally broken, so it seems that my whinging paid off. 28mm over two days followed six days later by 31mm bringing this month's precipitation to a tad over 60mm, which is a little more respectable. My son will be delighted as he uses tank water.

[wx_jon]

We did indeed have a number of wildfires here, although none as bad as the tragedy in California, where extremely dry easterly downslope winds brought wildfires into communities and destroyed them.

And after the dry craziness on Friday we had the earliest snowfall since 1971 - and that in a city that doesn't even get snow every year!

[John B]

An update from the land downunder.

Well October finished with 63.4 mm of rain, November 33.2 mm and so far in December 32.3 mm. That brings the year total to 767.4 mm, which is probably (without accurate checking) around and about an average year; that's from glancing through my rain records, which began in 1988.

Spring here had its moments, with cold days and warm-to-hot days so, once again, probably average. Summer has arrived with a vengeance. At the station we have had already a couple of short and sharp hot periods. Yesterday was 40.8ºC and the Bureau of Meteorology is threatening us with 45ºC in Penrith, the nearest official forecast town (6 Km) to the station. Given the conditions, it is also a total fire ban day (TOBAN). Do other countries have such regulations? Here it means, in effect, no naked flame outside (although certain exemptions can apply, such as gas barbeques).

I've wasted enough of your time.

Cheers,
John

[wx_jon]

Wow, that sure is hot!
Local counties can and do issue "burn bans" in the States. Because they are local it's often not clear which areas exactly are affected. I also don't know how much they're enforced.

[John B]

Thanks, Jon.

Here in New South Wales we have a dedicated service (the Rural Fire Service, or RFS) which attends to such matters. The state is divided into a number of fire areas each of which contains a number of council areas. The firefighters are all volunteers (over 70,000 of them) and go through rigorous training before being let loose in the wild. The RFS has an administrative centre, where staff are all salaried personnel. The state government underpins the system with finance while individual brigades augment that with council grants and fund raising. Each council also provides such things as vehicle maintenance workshops, food for the troops and suchlike.

That's a rough outline.

The other day did not reach 45º in Penrith, but made 44+. Not that you'd notice the difference. At the station, which is 200+ metres higher asl than said town, we had two consecutive hot days, 40.8ºC and 40.1ºC; we just made the 'magic forty'. Yesterday we only managed 22º, a most welcome change.

Well, that was a pile of trivia. If any reader of this post is interested try https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/about-us/fast-facts


Cheers,
John

P.S. Disclosure: The writer is an ex-member of the organisation and his son and daughter-in-law are both involved; the first as a volunteer, but also as a council employee managing aspects of the fire policies and RFS liaison with other emergency services , and his wife as a paid employee of RFS who is also a volunteer.
J