Dry period comes to an end in Sydney, Jyväskylä clinging to warmth despite lower minimums

After 5 weeks of dry weather in Sydney, rain has fallen at last. The first amounts fell last Friday and continued during the weekend also with a total of 7.2mm being recorded across the 3 days. Yesterday Sydney saw much higher recordings with 54.2mm recorded at the airport, with a further 2.4mm recorded in the early hours of today.

That 54.2mm recording from yesterday was more than all the rain that had fallen since the start of July. After bushfires ravaged parts of western Sydney on the 10th during another exceptionally warm day, the rain is a welcome relief. The recorded maximum from last Tuesday of 33.6C surpassed the previous monthly high from a couple days earlier of 32.4C.

Along with the first drops of rain last Friday, the monthly's lowest maximum was also set with the temperature failing to go above 18.4C. The monthly minimum was also set on Friday at 9.4C.


On the other side of the world Jyväskylä is still clinging to warmer weather. Last Friday and Saturday were particularly warm days with 18.6C and 20.1C recorded respectively. I was told personally that the weather was awesome and sunny. The temperature dropped on Sunday though with a high of 16.6C.

While the maximums have been among the highest of the past 5 years for the start of September, the minimums are also lower on average. If we look at the first 16 days of September during the last 5 years we can see quite a large difference.

Jyväskylä	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013
Average Min.	7.1	6.2	9.2	6.2	5.5
Average Max.	17.4	14.8	16.2	14.2	18.0

Averages for the first 16 days of September for the period 2009-2013





It's not shown here but it's interesting to point out that while the 2013 average minimum is the lowest at 5.5C, the overall monthly minimum so far stands at 2.0C. Comparing to the previous 4 years, the overall monthly minimum at the same point in September was actually lower in 3 of those years with 0.5C recorded in 2009, -0.8C in 2010 and -0.4C in 2012. 2011's figure stood at 4.6C, which is represented in the higher average minimum for that year.

The highest minimum so far for September 2013 is also the lowest of the past 5 years at 9.1C compared to 13.5C, 11.6C, 12.6C and 10.8C for 2009 through to 2012. It's clear, not only from graphs of the recorded temperatures, but also by looking at these figures, that the minimum temperatures just aren't fluctuating as much this year compared to previous years.

I don't have any statistics on hours of sunshine for the past few years, but I wouldn't be surprised if this year's recordings were the highest. Warm sunny days, cool cloudless nights... Of course not every statistical observation means something in particular, but it can be interesting to point out abnormalities.