Tag: Wet season

Townsville’s record-breaking 2025 rainfall

Our floods in Jan-Feb were so significant that I compared them to our massive 2019 floods. I should have waited, as it turned out, because they were followed by another drenching, 995 mm from March 10 – 28. By that point we had collected a swag of all-time rainfall records…

  • Highest rainfall in a wet season: 3100 mm (approx, depending on the definition of the wet season)
  • Highest December rainfall: 487 mm (prev. 458 mm in 1975)
  • Highest February rainfall: 1198 mm (prev. 961 mm in 2009)
  • Highest March rainfall: 1005 mm (prev. 696 mm in 2011)

…and another was within sight. Continue reading “Townsville’s record-breaking 2025 rainfall”

Uncommon wildlife on the Common

Town Common wetland
Wetland near Tegoora Rock

The weather has been a bit warm for enjoyable walking the last few months unless one gets out very early and doesn’t stay too long, as I said a year ago (funny, that) in a post celebrating my return to the Town Common. Yesterday was my first extended, enjoyable, walk there for a couple of months. I drove in to Freshwater bird hide and walked from there to the track junction near Tegoora Rock and back.

sunbird on grass stem
Sunbird perching on a grass stem, reming us how small they are.

Continue reading “Uncommon wildlife on the Common”

A wet start to 2023

This feels like a real wet season. There has been rain around for most of January, for a total of 411 mm.

Most of it arrived in one really wet week in the middle of the month. The 160 mm drenching on the weekend of the 14th-15th sent me down to nearby Aplin’s Weir on the Sunday morning to see how high the river was – high enough for a good photo, especially with Mt Stuart hiding in the clouds on the far side of the river.

The 411 mm total is somewhat higher than January’s average of 270 mm but not outrageously so. January totals vary enormously, from a mere 9 mm to 1142.

Aplins Weir in flood
Aplin’s Weir on Sunday morning Jan 15

Continue reading “A wet start to 2023”

The last of the Wet?

I wrote about “the last of the Wet” a bit too early, as it turned out.

The rain came back in the second week of May, with 102 mm in Townsville on May 11 and another 20-something on the days before and after. Nearby locations got a little more and Ross Dam rose by another 20% to 86%, so it’s now very comfortably full.

Mt Stuart from Ross Creek
Mt Stuart under cloud on 5 May

Continue reading “The last of the Wet?”

The last of the Wet

I have noticed before that our Wet seasons can end with a farewell deluge. If what we’re getting now – 200 mm and more in a day or two – is this year’s example, it’s a bit late.

John Anderson, veteran rural reporter for our local paper, reckons that if we haven’t had rain before Anzac Day, we’re not getting any. My own rule of thumb was that Easter marked the end of the Wet season, and I suspected that it might be tied somehow to the lunar and solar calendars. Easter, after all, falls just after the first full moon after the Equinox (more detail here).

Continue reading “The last of the Wet”