“Longer-term trends: Australia’s climate has warmed by ~1.47°C in the period 1910–2021, leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events.” – BOM [1]
The coming summer is no exception. After last summer’s record melting heat waves in Perth and much of WA, the BoM’s long range forecast for this summer is predicted to be hotter again. My balcony succulents are wilting at the very thought.
Update: I moved house and dug a new bog garden
Perth’s winter rains started in earnest this month and so far in May we’ve had 143.6mm, significantly more than the May average of 87.6mm. This is a good change after an extremely dry summer.
Update: I moved house and dug a new bog garden
Last week the autumn rains started in earnest and Perth had the wettest May day in 9 years. This was just in time to soak the bog garden I planted two weeks ago.
“A bog garden is essentially a pond that has been filled almost entirely with soil or other material, and which retains moisture through all or most of the year.” – Building Frog Friendly Gardens [1]
I planted Moon and Stars watermelon seeds from The Diggers Club last year, at the start of summer. I planted them among sunflowers in the empty block behind my house. It’s sand but I spread some compost before planting the seeds. While the sunflowers were growing I hand watered and the sunflowers grew well, but only one watermelon plant came up (from 2 or 3 seeds). It was very small for quite some time, but while I wasn’t looking it grew enormously.
Now the plant is about 3m x 3m, showing no signs of slowing, and has three fruit developing. I haven’t watered out there all year. There’s been more rain than usual this autumn, but not much fell in April and there was pretty much no rain in January and February. The summer was one of the hottest on record for Perth, and the heat continued into autumn, with 30°C+ days in April. I wonder how the plant survived, let alone thrived.
I haven’t tasted the fruit, so I don’t know if the harsh growing conditions will affect the taste, and I’m looking forward to my watermelons ripening. But I don’t know how to tell when the fruit is ripe, can anyone help me?
=^.^=
The whole point of introducing an emissions trading scheme is to make sure that polluting industries phase out and are replaced with cleaner alternatives, renewable energy and energy efficiency programmes. [1]
While the Australian Federal opposition dithers on passing the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) legislation which would enable carbon trading, Australia’s weather gets hotter and hotter.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Australian Climate Statement for 2009 noted last year was Australia’s second warmest year since high-quality records began in 1910 and the past decade was the warmest on record.
My title came from a search someone did and ended up at my blog. I’m not sure where “we” lives, but if they live in Perth, on 29 July when they did the search I thought Perth’s rain was over for the winter. I was wrong, but we did have 11 days of no rain from 26 July to 5 August. Temperatures hovered around 20°C and it felt like summer had arrived.
In July rain fell on only 16 days, half a month of no rain when July is Perth’s wettest month. I can’t believe I had to water some of my garden!? It was from the rainwater tank so it’s been replaced since then, but one morning I spent too long watering, missed my bus and had to wait half an hour for the next one. Despite so many fine days we still received 149.6mm of rain, only slightly below July’s average rainfall of 152.9mm. In June we received 20mm above the average, so for the two months rainfall was higher than average.
Please see this comprehensive post about growing Albany Woolly Bush.
My house wasn’t sustainably designed. It faces east west, which you want to avoid when designing with passive solar principles in mind. The back of my house was once a verandah, but whoever enclosed it didn’t bring their brain to work that day. Glass walls facing west aren’t a good idea. Every summer afternoon my back room bakes, lightly toasting the rest of the house. It’s a nice place to pass the time on a sunny winter afternoon, but during summer the blinds are permanently closed and still my house cooks.
Since May’s rain there’s been lots more sunny days, until this week. The satellite image of the cloud cover on Thursday morning showed a large portion of WA covered in thick cloud. This produced a nice downpour of 22.2mm for Perth, with June’s rainfall so far now 43.6mm. As a result we’re no longer having the driest January to June on record [1], but the rain didn’t last. It’s been fine since then and the forecast is for more un-June sunny weather until Thursday, even if the temperature has dropped.
Last winter I blogged about Perth’s water restrictions:
Only in October 2007 were restrictions placed on summer bore use, for irrigating residential gardens, parks, sporting fields and golf courses. Theoretically restrictions shouldn’t be needed in winter months because you’d think people would realise that irrigation isn’t necessary when it’s raining. Sadly, I’ve seen sprinklers in use at Curtin University and gardens near my house, when it was raining.
I’ve been hibernating from blogging while writing my thesis, but I had to blog about winter’s late arrival. There was a dismal amount of rain in May, 46mm on only 4 days with almost half falling on one day. This is way below the monthly average of 87mm and means in the last five months Perth has had a severe rainfall deficiency (in the lowest 5% of historical totals). To complement this, Monday was the hottest June day on record: 26°C. The cold weather has supposedly arrived now with 6°C last night (even though sunny days are forecast until Wednesday).
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the unusual rainfall this spring.
The start of November had 29.4mm over four days, already above the monthly average of 19.7mm. So far the less than average rainfall in September has not been cancelled out by November’s deluge. The average from 1 September to 30 November is 152mm and we’ve had 143.6mm. If the forecast rain falls we’ll be going even more above November’s average, but may only meet the three month average. Seeing as predicting the weather isn’t my forte, I’ll get back to reporting on what’s been and gone.
Ockham's Razor 