Overnight
thunderstorms bring record June rainfall to South Australia
Warm
night across central eastern Australia |
| Woomera radar at 1.20am CST (above) and the surface chart for 9.30pm Tuesday (below) BoM. The water vapour image for 1am (bottom) shows high humidity ahead of the front and wrapping around the low, while a tongue of very dry air feeds into the core. NPMOC |
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The most active area developed north of Woomera late yesterday evening and moved SE through the night, giving falls from 30 to over 50mm. Olympic Dam airfield at Roxby Downs, 70km north of Woomera, recorded 27.8mm in 2 hours to midnight, Woomera recorded 31.6mm in 2 hours to 4am, and Whyalla Airport recorded 30.0mm in the hour to 7am.
Other storms brought Whyalla town's 24 hour to 9am total to 58.6mm, the heaviest June one-day fall in nearly a century of readings. Woomera also made the record books, its 24 hour total of 48mm the heaviest in 51 years, and equal to a quarter of the town's average annual rainfall. Farther west, just over the SA/WA border, Eucla recorded 54mm, easily breaking a previous record of 38.3mm in 88 years of record. Most of Eucla's rain fell overnight from the cloudmass returning around the western side of the upper low
During the day, the interaction of contrasting airmasses dramatically deepened a surface low on the SA west coast during the morning, dropping it to 997hPa by 9.30am CST and bringing gales in the Bight, and wind gusts to 89km/h at Forrest, 120km inland in southeastern WA. An attendant cold front amplified to the east and southeast, carrying the area of storms and heavy showers across Adelaide, where the Kent Town gauge recorded 29mm between 3 and 6pm, and into western NSW and Victoria.
It was an exceptionally warm night for June across parts of the eastern inland. An area covering SE SA, NW NSW, SW Queensland and SE NT recorded minimum temperatures 8 to 11° above average, with Thargomindah's 19° recording some 11.9 above the norm. Warm conditions continued during the day in the east, with Tidbinbilla, southwest of Canberra, recording its highest June temperature in 15 years. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, Kalbarri, on the coast north of Perth, recorded its lowest June minimum in 26 years of record.