What’s Happening to Our Weather?
The weather affects us all, often tranquil, sometimes tempestuous, always fascinating. Our weather is a constant companion as unpredictable and mysterious as life itself.Â
As an amateur meteorologist, one of my goals when moving to the delightful leafy suburb of Forest Lake has been to maintain a record of our local weather; and construe from my observations how our weather is evolving. To enable this goal, I set up a home weather station at Brighton Parade in January, 2000.
Each season and yearly, I write Weather Bulletins based on my weather records that evaluate our unfolding weather. I make surmises regarding how our weather is developing, our local climate changing and the possible causes and implications. These bulletins have been shared with friends and colleagues and will now be available to the Forest Lake community courtesy of The Lake News.
Our weather experiences at Forest Lake are changing, some for the good, some not so good.
My records show that our Mesoclimate has become more equable over the past 24-years with warmer nights and cooler days. I have not recorded a frost since the 8th July 2014.
This has made living in our neck of the woods more comfortable, and with less need for heating and cooling in our houses. Further, there has been only a slight increase in storm activity that can harm our homes and gardens. On the downside, my temperature records tend to (marginally) confirm a more general change to a warmer world with all its consequences.
Spring 2024
Spring is a season full of twists and turns as polar and tropical weather systems battle for supremacy over our sub-tropical region. In the end, however, tropical influences inevitably triumph as the ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone) sets up a permanent camp over North Queensland around mid-November. Interestingly, this spring provided the coldest November day of 21.4 degrees C. on 20th November (during a Polar blast), while the month as a whole was the fourth warmest I have recorded at Brighton Parade.
Spring 2024, the second warmest in my records displayed a mean temperature of 22.3 degrees C., this being 0.9 degrees C. above the spring average of 21.4C. Each month, this spring recorded a mean temperature well above the average. Incidentally, the mean spring temperature has increased by 0.2 C. over the past 24 years.
And the lawn need mowing again! Spring rainfall in 2024 registered 428mm in the gage, almost double the spring average and just short of the record of 442mm recorded in the soggy Spring of 2021. November was the largest contributor with its wettest month in my records at 276mm. The average November rainfall is 119 mm.
Thunder storms are a weather feature that contributes considerably to Spring rainfall in our region. In
Spring 2024, 46% of the rain recorded at Brighton Pd. spilled from the 14 recorded thunder storms
experienced. The average number of spring thunder days at Brighton Pd. is 8.2 per Spring.
You are welcome to view my quarterly and yearly weather bulletins on The Lake News website. I hope you have as much pleasure in reading these as I have in writing them, and that you have a 2025 free of extreme and unfriendly weather hazards.
By Nick Oughton, December 5 2024.
Nicholas Oughton is a local amateur meteorologist who has resided at Brighton Parade in Forest Lake since 2000, and has recorded many aspects and elements of the local weather since that date. Based on his observations and records, he writes seasonal accounts regarding the weather, including analysis, synopsis and comments. These seasonal and annual bulletins are sent to a diverse group of people at universities and the Bureau of Meteorology, and The Lake News for publication.
