LAST month completed a notably dry February to September period over most of Victoria, including the North East.
In Wangaratta, total rainfall during February to September was 270mms, which is well down on the average of 465mms for this period.
It was the driest February to September in Wangaratta since 186mms in 2018.
Other drier February to September periods were 232mms in 2006, 177mms in 1982, 208mms in 1976, 222mms in 1967, 200mms in 1944 and 215mms in 1914.
Out of this batch of past dry February to September periods only 2018 followed a very wet January which also happened this year.
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This makes things quite interesting for the coming months of this year and the first four months of next year.
It was notably warmer than normal from September 2018 to April 2019 in North East Victoria.
Maximum temperatures reached 32.6 degrees at the end of October, 37.3 degrees in early November then heavy rain late November 2018 and flooding rains on December 13, which nearly drowned Eldorado.
A heat wave just after Christmas saw the temperature reach 41 degrees, with 45.4 degrees on January 25, 2019.
The rainfall prognosis for 2025 does not look good at all as 2019 was a very dry year with disastrous bushfires from November 2019 to February 2020 in Victoria, NSW and southern QLD.
During September there were 10 days of frosts in Wangaratta, 16 days of frosts in Rutherglen and nine days of frosts in Benalla.
In Wangaratta the mean maximum temperature for September was 18.4 degrees (0.7 degrees above normal) while the mean minimum temperature of 0.8 degrees was a shade above normal.
The highest temperature reached 27.3 degrees on September 6 whilst the lowest temperature fell to minus 1.8 degrees on September 18.
Total rainfall for September was 32.4mms at Wangaratta, 27.9mms at Benalla and 39.6mms at Rutherglen (compared to September averages around 55mms).
The lowest temperature in Rutherglen was minus 3.6 degrees on September 16 - the lowest September temperature at Rutherglen since 1995.
