The first 10 days of January have seen widespread heavy rain and thunderstorms across much of Victoria and across the border into the Riverina and to as far north as Broken Hill and Bourke.
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Rainfalls in the 24 hours to Monday, January 8, broke many daily records for January.
At Bendigo 91.8 millimetres was not only a record daily fall for January but also the wettest ever day in 162 years of records.
At Redesdale 116.8 millimetres fell on January 8 and at Heathcote 154.4 millimetres also occurred on the same day. Redesdale recorded its wettest ever day in 120 years of records while Heathcote had its wettest January day in 165 years of records with only one wetter day overall, a record daily fall of 179.1 millimetres on February 10, 1883.
At both Lake Eildon and Yea a record daily rainfall for January of 84 and 88.4 millimetres respectively was also set on Monday January 8. The previous wettest January day at Lake Eildon was 62 millimetres in 2021 and 73.4 millimetres on January 8, 1897, at Yea. Yea had a two-day total of 120 millimetres; the only wetter two-day totals were in February 1973, March 1950 and September 1916.
Closer to home Strathbogie has recorded a total of 117 millimetres for the first nine days of January, the wettest for early January since 1934. Wangaratta has recorded 104 millimetres, the wettest for early January since both 1934 and 1974.
Benalla recorded 84 millimetres, Rutherglen 35.8, Albury only 24 and Narrandera 84.6.
Daily maximum temperatures to date this month have been half to one degrees below normal for January at these towns while night minimum temperatures have been two to three degrees above normal.
Further north, Broken Hill has had 148 millimetres rainfall to date, the wettest for January since 216 millimetres in 1974. This heavy rain at Broken Hill followed one of the hottest Decembers on record. Looking at the records for Broken Hill, the month of December 1973 was certainly not as hot.
The current synoptic surface chart has shown a long belt of a strong high pressure sitting well south of the Bight and a broad area of low pressure covering most of the interior of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. This has continued to be a blocking situation and it has been that way since November 17, resulting in an absence of very hot days of 40 degrees in our regions. To date there is no indication when this blocking situation will break down and when it finally does, probably after January 23, we should get some days of over 40 degrees.
In recent weeks low pressure troughs have projected southwards from near Bourke to well into Gippsland and then moved westwards into South Australia and deepened markedly, bringing the heaviest rainfalls to many places west from Wangaratta. Tropical cyclone Jasper, which gave all-time record December rainfalls to the Cairns District was an unusually early occurrence for a tropical cyclone. This cyclone could be blamed for all these notably record daily rainfalls in Victoria.
