Southern Hemisphere Growing Season 24/25

[Tyrone]

Well it’s the southern spring equinox today, so the days are getting longer than the nights, overall temps are rising and things start to get growing again. It’s a time of weeding, watering and planting. There’s always much to do in a palm garden. 

For my area winter was a warm and dry event. Not anywhere near enough rain fell during winter and in a basically summer dry, winter wet climate, that’s an issue. However winter had no frost, and I had no cold damage whatsoever. My bananas pushed a flower and started opening on a 3C night! The bananas all set well and they should ripen in time. Even my Chrysalidocarpus  plumosa pushed an inflorescence through winter and I’m waiting for the flowers to open now. My Inga edulis (ice cream bean tree) has ripe beans on it now. That’s never happened before to have ripe fruit so early in spring. The grapes have flower buds already.

This year I think will be weird weather wise. Ocean temps are up everywhere. The Pilbara is getting tropical rain over the next few days, well before any monsoonal activity has started. Even though it’s been cool cloudy and dry so far this September, on Thursday we are expecting thunderstorms from the north, not cold fronts from the south. I reckon it will be a hot and dry one this year, possibly interspersed with thunderstorms from the tropics in my area. I just hope we don’t get any mid 40s C this year like last year, but I doubt the odds are in my favour. 

[cbmnz]

Barring any October surprise, my palms have hit Spring in good shape. The other night just touched 0C for 5 min, nothing froze up. Actually did not have any freeze hard enough to affect even the bananas since July.  Even A. Alexandre is mostly intact and the two Cunninghama look far better than this time last year.

What will summer bring? Well since 2017-2018 it seemed Summers were getting hotter and a lot of the time sunnier with 2021-2022 being the peak.  Then 2022-23 blew that way when it felt like most of this Island was going to wash into the sea if it did not stop raining so hard. Last summer was thankfully more moderate but sill wet enough that the lawn and most farmlands stayed green throughout.

I think a 2019-2020 style mega dry is possible to occur again and might be due- I think it's the new default due to poleward movement of the Hadley cells.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tyrone]

It’s around 7C this morning at 6.45am and heading for a clear 27C then thunderstorms tonight. Tomorrow the rain continues as we get winds off the ocean for days. We need the rain, but the temps are yo-yoing as the highs move through. 

[Tyrone]

Well it hit 27.7C yesterday but the thunderstorms were a bit of a non event. Was expecting 7-10mm and got around 1mm of rain. Some impressive lightening and rolling thunder but it just skirted on either side of my area and slid out to sea. We got about 5 minutes of heavy rain on the outskirts of the thunder cell and that was it. 
Today we are going for a max of 16C and a cold front will swing through today with hopefully a bit of rain. 

[Tyrone]

Since midnight yesterday we’ve had 44mm of rain with everything drenched. That brings our rainfall for sept up to about 79mm which is still technically dry. Only going for 16C today but 27C by Tuesday. 

[tropicbreeze]

September was a funny month. Started hot and then we got a bit of rain which brought the temperatures down to mid/low 30's. The rain didn't last long and it's back to the high temps. The start of October is pretty much the same as the last week of September. Hopefully October brings more rain, although today, 1st day of the month, was dry, sunny and 39.4.

September average max. 36.3
September average min. 22.9

[Tyrone]

It got to 34C here today. Around 8.30pm it’s just over 16C and the thunderstorms are firing up to the north with lightening and thunder. Hopefully we get some rain. The other day we were barely hitting 16C. I won’t be lighting the fire tonight. 

[Phil Petersen]

 

Wettest day in 100years for Dunedin. 130mm within 24 hours - and its still coming ⛈️

https://x.com/NiwaWeather/status/1841943013968548309?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1841943013968548309|twgr^173edcfe630cc4dcbbde8dcd3289885ac3c29248|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stuff.co.nz%2Fnz-news%2F350436381%2Fweather-live-state-emergency-declared-dunedin-red-rain-warning-until-11pm-friday

[Tyrone]

It’s been wet and miserable here the last few days. Only got to 15C yesterday. The rainfall in the last 7 days has been around 70mm which is the wettest week since winter 23. 

[Banana Belt]

On the other side of the Big Ocean northeast of Australia and New Zealand, our weather here on South Oregon coast is still warm and dry but the days are getting short and the nights longer.  Winter is comming.  The El Nino of the Pacific lasted for about 8 months this year and is turning to La Nina which will persist into April and May, 2025.  NOAA is predicting a weak and short duration La-Nina.  https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml

 

[Tyrone]

Under a high pressure ridge and the coldest morning in weeks with a min of 2.7C which is very cold for October. Maybe I will get a couple of cherries on the cherry tree this year because they like those sort of temps around flower set. Tomorrow is a top of 29C then a spot of rain but nothing forecast below 20C max for the foreseeable future. 

[PalmCode]

19c and mostly  cloudy  with a few light spits today. Sun feels hot when its not blocked out from clouds. We've had a few cooler days with Southerly winds this month and it's probably drier than average.

 Here's my biggest Hedyscepe that was exposed to a light frost back in July. No real damage at all which is great but next summer might still burn it a bit.