Wangaratta has recorded its wettest March since 2012, with 85.4mm falling last month compared to 171mm in March 2012.
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It was also the coolest March since 2012. The mean maximum temperature of 26.1 was nearly two degrees below normal.
Melbourne completed its wettest quarter of any year since 1973 and the coldest last two months since 1980.
It was a very wet January to March period at Tweed Heads this year. The total rainfall of 1510mm was the wettest since 1934mm in 1906. Two other very wet such periods were 1493mm in 1890 and 1420mm in 1953. Port Macquarie had 680mm altogether in February and March. Higher rainfalls occurred in 1842, 1851, 1887, 1890 and 1974.
Coonabarabran had a total of 358mm for February and March - the wettest for both months since 435mm in 1959. Other very wet February-March periods of 320mm or more happened in 1887, 1890, 1896, 1904, 1908 and 1961. It is very interesting to note that there five very wet such periods in the 22 years to 1908, and only three in the next 111 years in Coonabarabran.
The rainfall pattern from north of Coonabarabran to northern Victoria has been very similar to that of 1959 since about February 13. There were high temperatures late January to early February in Victoria and the southern half of NSW in 1959, and this also happened this year.
April 1959 started off being wet, with nearly 50mm in Wangaratta during the first two days, and 99mm in Coonabarabran.
The current surface synoptic charts indicate this April will also start wet. Surface synoptic charts of late March-early April 1959 did show a persistent warm humid easterly to north-easterly airstream across NSW and Victoria, with a strong high-pressure system south of Tasmania and a complex low sitting over South Australia. Once the rain cleared about April 3, 1959 it resulted in the warmest April in Melbourne since 1938. This time, the surface synoptic charts from about March 24 have not been similar to those of 1959 and temperatures have not been as warm as the late March-early April of 1959 in Victoria and NSW.
The rain expected late this week will come with frontal passages, with a complex low and maximum temps below normal for several days.
