Last year we had a wet summer with 1,197 mm of rain on the Ranges. It was also a cool summer with a mean max temperature of 24ºC. It is somewhat different this year with summer rainfall less than half the previous year and an increase of two degrees in the mean maximum summer temperature.
A complex synoptic weather system prevailed for most of February. By the beginning of the month the monsoonal trough had drifted lower and brought some useful falls of rain to our region. A high pressure system in the Tasman Sea extended a ridge up the east coast. The associated south-easterly winds with isolated showers brought the ‘brollies’ out. We had thick fog on the 19th. As winds backed north-westerly temperatures climbed to thirty degrees, which would not have been too bad had it not been for extreme Relative Humidity prevailing at the time. The Heat Stress factor recorded on Friday 20th was 41ºC; dangerously high for the young and elderly alike.
Weather data was lost at the Maleny Weather Station due to ants building their nests in highly sensitive recording equipment; resulting in the loss of some computer graphics.