'Hottest ever' January for Shepparton

If you thought this month was one of the hottest Januaries in recent memory, you would be right.

Record after record tumbled as Shepparton sweltered through unusually high temperatures.

‘‘We’ve seen extremely warm temperatures across large parts of the country in January and the region around Shepparton was no exception,’’ Bureau of Meteorology climatologist David Martin said.

‘‘The mean temperatures at both our Shepparton airport site and our main site in Tatura are tracking to be the warmest on record for January.’

The mean maximum temperature at Shepparton aerodrome observation station was tracking more than 4°C hotter than the 22-year average for January, up to 36.6°C from the long-term average of 31.8°C.

The previous hottest January average was 34.4°C, recorded in 1999.

The maximum temperature record for January was broken not once, but twice, first on Friday, January 4, when the mercury hit 44.6°C and again on Friday when it climbed to 46.2°.

The previous high of 44.3°C was recorded on January 31, 2009.

Friday also had an overnight minimum of 27.8°C, 2.5°C hotter than the maximum experienced the following Sunday.

January was also unusually dry, with rainfall to date just 5.6 mm, well down on the 28.2 mm average and 100.8 mm maximum of 1999.

Most of this month’s rain — 4 mm — fell in yesterday’s morning storm.

Without the sudden downfall, the month would have not only been the hottest on record but the also the driest.

Story from The Shepparton News by Myles Peterson  - “Hottest ever”.

Shepparton swelters through hottest March in at least 50 years

-      by Shepparton News reporter Cameron Whitely

Shepparton sweltered last month, experiencing its hottest March for at least 50 years.

A heatwave at the start of March affected much of Victoria including Shepparton, which had four days over 39°C in the first nine days of the month.

The city saw temperatures above 30°C for the first 17 days of March and only once for the whole month did the maximum daily temperature dip below 20°C.

Despite cooler temperatures in the latter part of March, the average maximum temperature for the month was 30.2°C — the first time the 30°C mark had been exceeded for at least five decades.

The Bureau of Meteorology started taking observations from Shepparton Airport in 1996 and before that, at a station at Lemnos with BoM statistics for that site dating back to 1965.

BoM senior forecaster Rod Dickson said a heatwave at the start of March had seen many records broken across the state.

‘‘A number of other stations in the north of Victoria broke record runs above temperature thresholds,’’ he said.

‘‘Looking at Shepparton, there were seven consecutive days about 37°C.

‘‘It cooled down a little bit after that but Shepparton was still recording temperatures between 30, 32 and 33 until about the 17th.

‘‘We had a strong cold front go through on the 18th, which cooled the temperature down across the state and displaced the hot air that was sitting over northern Victoria.

‘‘Generally there were milder conditions over the second half of the month but the extreme heatwave at the start of the month did have an effect on the average temperature and we ended up with a number of records.’’

Not only was March hot, it was also dry, with only 28.4mm of rainfall, with 24.6mm recorded on the 18th.

But the figure was significantly more than last March, which had only 3.8mm of rain.