The dry spell that started at the end of last month continued on until the middle of January. The end came with a change in synoptic weather conditions as an east coast low of 1004hPa developed off the central Queensland coast. Over the next few days the low, together with an upper level system, brought substantial rainfall to the Maleny catchment plateau for the Mary, Stanley, Mooloolah and Maroochy Rivers. Flash flooding occurred in some areas

 Most of the heaviest rain precipitated from Nimbostratus cloud in the upper level system  whereas isolated showers were from surface maritime Stratocumulus clouds that came over the coast on an onshore air stream to the Ranges.

The heaviest 24- hour rainfall was on 25^th when 135mm was recorded. Last year, in a strong La Nina year, the 24-hour figure was 282mm. It was in 1974, at the time of Brisbane’s big flood Maleny recorded the highest ‘all time’ one-day record with 552mm.   Total rainfall for this month is 536.4mm, compared with January last year when 902.8mm was recorded.  The 119 year average for Maleny in January is 292mm.

Baroon Pocket dam is 103% full and is closed for water related recreation.

It was very muggy throughout the rain spell with the Relative Humidity percentage in the upper 90’s on many days.  [Mould is a problem in many households]. However, the mean RH in morning and mean in afternoon were 85% and 75% respectively.  Both within the norm figure, due to the dry first half of the month.

The mean maximum temperature for the month is 18.4°C, representing 1.3 degrees below the norm. However, the mean minimum is only slightly below average.

Not surprisingly, the Bright Sunshine hours recorded this month are exactly double the 76 hours recorded in January last year.

 The Bureau of Meteorology has released its Annual Climate Statement for 2011, highlighting a year likely to go down as the third wettest on record. Last year’s weather was dominated by two La Niña events. The first, one of the strongest in recorded history, began in 2010 and continued into the autumn of 2011. The second, weaker event, formed toward the end of winter.

If weather is your thing, and wild, weird weather is even more your thing, then 2011 must have left you happy as a clam.. You must have been very busy keeping track of the rash of tornadoes, floods, fires, droughts, high highs and low lows that inspired climatologist Bill Patzert to call it “global weirding.”

It started out with the news that scientists had created 52 rain storms in the Abu Dhabi desert in 2010, and it just got weirder from there.  In the UK, the two-spring, no-summer year fascinating, but poor wildlife found it plain confusing. Animals all over the world suffered through the weird weather of 2011, with mass animal deaths making the news several times in 2011. (Remember when thousands of birds dropped dead from the sky in Arkansas, Louisiana and Sweden, millions of dead fish washed up in Chesapeake Bay and Brazil, and hundreds of dead crabs turned up in England?)

Meteorologists have offered scientific explanations for the weird weather that mostly point to La Niña and the North Atlantic Oscillation and to the Arctic Oscillation, but they are don’t all agree on the extent to which global warming is to blame.

They all agree, sadly, that we need to prepare for more weird weather. In an article on Nature.com, Quirin Schiermeier tells us the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) warns that “it is ‘virtually certain’ — meaning 99 to100% probability in IPCC terminology — that the twenty-first century will see an increase in the frequency and magnitude of warm temperature extremes and a decrease in cold extremes.”

True to form, 2012 has started out with a springtime-like tornado in Texas, a winter-like, snowy summer in Australia, too little snow in Canada and too much in France, Austria and Germany, drought in Argentina and extreme heat in Africa.

Welcome to the wacky world of weather watchers. 2012 looks like it is going to be a wild ride for most of us.

The event started late on Sunday with a moderate-sized solar flare that erupted near the centre of the Sun, said Doug Biesecker, a physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Centre.

“The flare itself was nothing spectacular, but it sent off a very fast coronal mass ejection travelling 4 million miles per hour (6.4 million kph),” he said.

A rush of radiation in the form of solar protons has already begun bombarding the Earth and is likely to continue through until the end of the week.

The radiation storm is the largest of its kind since 2005 but still ranks only a three on the scale of one to five, enough to be considered “strong” but not “severe,” Mr Biesecker said.

For instance, the storm could spell disruptions to airline flights, oil operations, Arctic exploration and space satellites.

“It’s the people who need GPS (global positioning system) accuracy of centimetres who have to worry, not people who want to know if you’re going to turn the car 30 metres ahead.”

The week’s rainfall amounted to 212mm, bringing the total for the month to 218mm. Maximum temperature with 26°C was in line with the norm for January. The Minimum temperature of 17°C was one degree below the month’s average.  

The Bureau of Meteorology has released its Annual Climate Statement for 2011, highlighting a year likely to go down as the third wettest on record, with widespread and severe flooding across northern and eastern Australia.

Last year’s weather was dominated by two La Niña events. The first, one of the strongest in recorded history, began in 2010 and continued into the autumn of 2011. The second, weaker event, formed toward the end of winter.

What a contrast the above was to the end of the week when on Saturday the maximum temperature struggled to reach 22°C, five degrees below the norm !

Sunday brought the fortnight’s dry spell to an end when showers turned to some continuous rain from a northwest cloudband bringing rainfall of over 40mm, and some welcome relief to local gardens and low level water tanks.

In a normal year it is expected that the monsoonal trough line will extend from the Coral sea, through Cape York, NT, and over to the Indian ocean. This year so far is an exception. Currently the trough line is firmly bedded in the Coral Sea and curving round to the Indian Ocean well clear of the Australian coast line.

A high pressure system in the Tasman Sea with a ridge extending up the east coast was the main influence of the week’s weather. This brought fine light winds and mostly overcast conditions to the Ranges. Light drizzle on Saturday precipitated 1mm into the rain gauges.

Monday morning was the coldest of the week with 13.9°C at 5.00am. The hottest day was Sunday with 28.4°C at 1.15pm; with a hear stress factor measuring 36.8°C.