A few interesting weather stations around Australia (Part 2)

While I follow weather more closely for Sydney, there are also a few other locations around Australia that I find interesting to look at. Here are a couple more in addition to Mount Wellington and Marble Bar from a previous post.


Darwin, Northern Territory

Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory, is located in the central north of the country. It is a tropical location with distinct wet and dry seasons. The dry season usually lasts from May to September with the wet season mostly in the summer months.

Darwin is quite unlike any other capital city in Australia in terms of weather. Due to its tropical location, temperatures are very similar throughout the whole year. The average monthly maximums range from 30.5C in July to 33.3C in November. Just looking at 2013 so far daily maximums have ranged between 27.4C, recorded once each in May and July, to 36.6C from October 10. That's not even a 10C difference. Jyväskylä on the other hand can almost have a 60C difference. The yearly minimum stands at 15.8C from August 8, but has been as high as 29.1C.

In terms of rainfall, the wet season during the summer months can present remarkable levels of precipitation. In the 24hrs to 9am on February 16 2011 a record 367.6mm fell. February 2011 also holds the record for the most rain in a month, 1110.2mm, which is more than the average annual rainfall for Sydney.

Darwin is also susceptible to cyclones. Cyclone Tracy, which hit on Christmas Eve in 1974, remains as one of the most significant storms to affect Australia. A maximum wind gust from Tracy of 217km/h is still the holder of the strongest gust in 52 years of records.


Macquarie Island, Tasmania

Although Macquarie Island is politically a part of Tasmania it is quite a long way from it. Macquarie Island is a small island in the Southern Ocean approximately halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. It has no permanent population but weather measurements have been taken since 1948.

As you can probably imagine, Macquarie Island is not the warmest place on the planet. Although, it's actually quite similar to Darwin in a way. Temperatures on the island do not vary too much throughout the year. July is typically the coldest month with an average maximum of 4.9C and January is the warmest with 8.8C. The record high is only 14.4C from December 10 1984, while the record minimum stands at -9.4C from July 3 2003.

Macquarie Island is also very wet. It has an average of 315 days of rain each year! Rainfall levels are usually quite low though. Even with 315 days of rain per year the average annual rainfall is lower than Sydney (971.7mm compared to 1085.4mm). So far this year there has only been 22 days without rain.

Being a small island in the middle of wide open ocean, it's not surprising that wind gusts can be extremely strong as well. 185km/h is the overall record, measured on September 24 1980, but strong winds can be experienced year round.


So there's a few weather stations around Australia that are quite different from each other. I'm sure there are plenty of others that are quite interesting to follow as well so this is just a quick look at what's out there. Have a look around the Bureau of Meteorology site for yourself and see what you can find.