Warm Winter in Canberra?

There goes the late spring easy skiing up on the range.

housebound said :

And here I was hoping for a decent snow season for the first time since 2000.

I suspect late Aug/into Sept might be the best bet this winter. There should be some decent accumulation then… I think we’ll have a return to more steady winter in August.

But I wouldn’t be booking snow trips late sept/into Oct, spring will be early adn quite definite.

housebound said :

La Nina, El Nino (and there should be a tilde over the second ‘n’ in each), neither of which is a product of climate change, also the cycle could easily be.

We’ve just come through a La Nina event. Notice all the floods we’ve had in the south east? There’s a bit more to it, sadly. El Nino still manages to bring reliable drought, but La Nina no longer brings reliable wet.

It certainly is a balmy winter. I have daffodils blooming already. I remember winters a few years back where we rarely had a day about 10 degrees. A frost was a daily occurrence, then the days were sunny, but very cold. Winters in recent years have been quite mild in comparison.

the marked change between my meeting this morning in turner in sunshine, and the recent foray outside to get something for lunch makes me think that we have inherited melbourne weather… The temps are all over the place. The SOI is in the negatives at the moment, which is not a normal behavior for this time of year – the sea temp should be warmer, not cooler as the currents transport the warmer waters from the US…

It’s gonna get worse anyway, and possible all because of us:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/22/2632698.htm

La Nina, El Nino (and there should be a tilde over the second ‘n’ in each), neither of which is a product of climate change, also the cycle could easily be.

Oh, you mean like the 1851 Black Thursday bushfires in Victoria that burnt out approximately 5 million ha?

Those bushfires…

Right so you are suggesting I’m being alarmist? I hope so because I like things the way they are, maybe it’s just a decade of drought and el-nina (which I thought was also a product of climate change – but anyway).

housebound said :

And here I was hoping for a decent snow season for the first time since 2000.

Those days are gone. Mud sliding will be the new sport.

Are you suggesting that Australia gets bushfires? In summer?

Surely not…

Surely I am and if this winter is indicative it’s going to be a real scorcher and then another year of rolling inquiries and heads and bonuses for investigative journalists.

Or that we don’t get lots of rainfall…

And here I was hoping for a decent snow season for the first time since 2000.

Danman said :

lol @ thumper 🙂

I should clarify that by warmer days I meant the last leg of winter has arrived…Not that an apocalyptic all consuming flash fire was imminent.

I corrected ‘imminent’ for you.

2003 (Canberra) and 2008 (Victoria) spring to mind.

What last leg?? We didn’t even *have* a winter. Which means summer will be *another* freaking scorcher with dried up rivers and water restrictions. Surely this is not the new norm.

lol @ thumper 🙂

I should clarify that by warmer days I meant the last leg of winter has arrived…Not that an apocalyptic all consuming flash fire was iminent.

Great, so another SCORCHING hot summer ahead and another several years of royal commissions in to poor bushfire disaster management.

Well whatever is happening to the Earth’s climate I’m over it, I hope it doesn’t just keep getting hotter. Heat sucks unless you live in Sweden. We don’t need any more.

Well it seems it’s not just you. I was also thinking that it’s been a warmer winter than usual. I miss the frosts…

for all those early risers, you may have noticed that the winter solstice is over, ended around June 21 I think, so the sun is getting up earlier than a month ago, so one can only presume that this will lead to warmer days

I’m up at 5.30am most mornings to exercise the dog (and my own fat can), and today was comfortably warm, only wore a single layer.

Monday was much cooler.

I would expect us to notice a range of changes in weather over our lifetimes. There are a lot of causes, but most ‘climate’ changes a bit on a fairly constant basis anyway.

No complaints about winter – Canberra still has the best climate except for recent summers that sucked (lets be honest – 40 degrees is *not* fun).

So if the Airport BOM site may be an inaccurate trend – do we have any other more isolated sites to go off – say Ginini or Thredbo or some rural area?

Tis lovely at the moment, though we did get a snowfall, albeit small, last year, wouldn’t mind that happening again for the kids sake, they think its great when it snows at home.

Apart from that, current version of winter we have is great.

Cuplrits are actually unknown because Australia’s temperature record is not very long, but most people suspect global warming, or the drought, or El Nino ….

In Canberra, the whole thing is confounded by the progressive building around the BOM weather station at the airport.

Probably a localised affect. Cities are warm places and Canberra is getting fairly large (area wise).

This suggests we are coming out of a ‘little ice age’ popularised in our culture

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article5391955.ece

Settled… Canberra is getting warmer.. What’s the culprit and is this a permanent trend? Seems so.

No it’s warmer this year without a doubt. We have only had a couple of true canberra winters days. Considering that the normal max temp for July is 11C (that temp isn’t normally reached until mid afternoon), and we’re already at 13C before 9am this morning I think speaks a lot.

I hardly regard this winter at all unpleasant – compared to any other capital except Darwin. I still maintain Canberra has an awesome climate except for the scorching hot summers.

housebound said :

Try this link here:
http://www.envcomm.act.gov.au/soe/2007actreport/indicators07/weather07/temperature07

Scroll down to figures 7 and 8 (and you could also check out figures 4,5,6).

This settles it though – the weather is definitely getting warmer – which in my opinion sucks. I really like Canberra climate – so do most people who get over the Canberra bashing mentality that infects the Australian psyche like a disease (God forbid if Australia was ever *proud* of anything we did or built).

However, a book on human evolution I found in Civic library actually told me that the Earth’s climate started fluctuating wildly some ~30 million years ago? And we have been in an uptrend for quite some time. A Swedish colleague told me that Sweden had vineyards in the 15th century, so maybe we’re coming out of a cold spell?

Either way it’s settled that Canberra IS getting warmer – and fast.

And we are culpable because our wealth largely rests on coal exports to the big polluters Korea and China.

Anyone who opposes Uranium mining has rocks in their head.

I have found this winter to be much wetter than normal, even though we have had little rain. I am not sure if this is due to me having a toddler that I need to keep indoors until the sun eventually comes out and dries the grass at 11am. I also think until last week there have been very few bright sunny days which is what I normally think of Canberra’s winter (cold but with a bright sun) – this has added to me thinking this year winter has been more miserable than most.

Certainly seems the snakes think it’s getting warmer with that elderly woman bitten on Monday.

It was a balmy 12 degrees as I drove to work this morning at 5.30 am. That does seem unusual for this time of year. New role at works means I’m up at 4.45 am each morning, and while I originally thought it would be a killer because of the cold, it hasn’t been that bad… yet!

Try this link here:
http://www.envcomm.act.gov.au/soe/2007actreport/indicators07/weather07/temperature07

Scroll down to figures 7 and 8 (and you could also check out figures 4,5,6).

Can anyone obtain any definitive anomaly data from the BOM or other source? It seems there is a trend, so I am curious just how much of a trend or just an anomaly this is.

Either way – Canberra never felt *that* cold – people do bang on about it. I will never forget this chump from Sydney I worked with (briefly – he was so depressing you wanted to jump out the window) complaining on the phone that he was in “sunny Canberra ha ha” – when it as Autumn, *sunny*, still and just damn *perfect* that day – about 25 degrees. Seems people just get this stereotype stuck in their head.

Personally we love Canberra – if it weren’t for damn stamp duties being hoarded to fund stupid arts quotas we’d buy a house tomorrow.

The winters have been warmer since 2000, a trend some take as evidence of global warming, but which others attribute to the drought – it’s probably both.

#9 – this has been well documented for rainfall patterns (not totals before you all get too excited), and the trend in temperature patterns doesn’t surprise me one bit. But be aware that our seasons always seem to arrive about 21 days late – starting around the time of the solstices and equinoxes. It seems our seasonal changes are more in tune with the apparant ‘movement’ of the sun north and south rather than the calendar.

I have to agree with Thumper et al, the winters here are very mild. I put this down to them being a dry cold, rather than the wet cold of other places,(notably Cornwall Thumper.)

Dry cold just makes your skin feel cold, a wet cold seeps into your very marrow.

Honestly, there are some people out there as soft as marshmallows. I’ve been in Canberra for nearly 40 years, and I remember the winters of my youth seemed much colder. But even then they never compared to northern hemisphere winters which will snap yer tits off.
The winters we have now are positively balmy.

I came back to Canberra about 8 years ago and noticed that the summers seem both hotter and longer, with the cold weather kicking in a bit later and the winters seem shorter. That said, the last twelve months have been a little more ‘normal’

ps I’ll see if I can avoid FUD, whatever that is, and produce some hard data to support my theory

Wikipedia tells me that -13 was a record low for December in New York. A bit misleading, like calling our 3 degree day out standard temperatures, though anybody visiting our fair city on that day may be forgiven for thinking it’s a regular occurance.

Yeah I’m with Thumper on this one. I was in NYC in December ’04 and one day it was -13 Celsius at 3pm. It was so cold my hands weren’t working. People were huddling together in Starbucks as if it were the most fascinating tourist destination in the city.

It was 16 degrees in Canberra today – that’s akin to an English summer!

it is only late july – don’t get cold til august really. it is a tad chilly at 7am each morning, ‘specially if you’re gearing up to cycle to work, but there are, as astutely pointed out above, far colder climes in which one could live. cold for australian cities maybe, but really, people what rekkun it gets cold here need a pint of htfu…

Personally winter hasn’t really started yet. I have given this abit of thought over the last 6 months and to me it seems the seasons are out of sync. If my theory is correct we are out by about 4-5 weeks, so in effect it’s still the first month of winter. I also applied this theory to autumn and summer and it was dead on.

I think it seems warmer this year because I’m not working with any Queenslanders. They usually start complaining from around mid-April. By the time we hit the sub-zeros, they come waddling in like Comic Book Guy and by the time they remove most of the layers at around 11.00 you realise they didn’t put on 25kg overnight

You must be a late rising student – the days have been loverly.

Get up at 5am to walk the dog.

then get back to me.

Yep, you’re definitely right there Demo.

I cycle to work every weekday, and previous years I’ve muttered curses under my breathe at Mother Nature while I braved a damn cold sub-zero Canberra mornings (usually around 8am).

So far this winter, every morning has been a pleasant ride. Kinda miss the cursing…

Well, we’re only halfway through winter. Let’s see what the other half has to offer…!
(but tonight/early tomorrow morning it’s going to be a sweltering minimum of 7C!)

I was thinking todat that it seems like it’s starting to warm up, but there have been some freezing nights lately. If you’re the type of person that spends after dark inside 7 days a week then you probably haven’t noticed 🙂

Yes it has been a mild winter this year, except the one day of 4 degrees. There’s only been a few frosts and very few forays into the minuses over night.

You must come from the distant land of Dillusionville. Greetings stranger! Put on some headwear, I think the cold is freezing your brain.