Endless Perth Summer, Is It Ending?

Apr 6, 2011; 12:34 PM ET

SUMMER OF 2010-2011 WAS LONG, HOT AND DRY

Drawing from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and our own AccuWeather.com database, I have gathered a glimpse of what seems to have been a remarkably hot summer–and a dry one at that. I will use data from the Perth Airport.

Google Maps image.

Rather than the traditional three-month summer, I have stretch summer to include November through the first five days of April, which have certainly been summer like.

The mean temperature for the stretch (more than five months) was 25.4 degrees C, or 77.6 degrees F, which would be 3.8 C (6.9 F) above normal.

There were 20 days of 100 F (about 38 C), highest being the 107 F (41.8 C) reached on 29 January.

As for rainfall, it was 67.2 mm, or 81 percent of normal. Most of the rain, 43.2 mm, fell during the month of January, when moisture from a tropical cyclone found its way over the city. Thus, the other four months (and start of April, which had no rain) were exceptionally dry.

The heat, powered by dry and gusty easterly winds, fanned a few rashes of bush fires, some of them tragically destructive.

AT LAST, A CHANGE OF SEASON COMING

It is now fall, or autumn, in the Southern Hemisphere, so day length and insolation are on the wane. It can only turn cooler, barring some extreme departure from the historical climate experience.

At this writing (it is early on April 7, local time), a cold front has made its way eastward, through the city, sparking spotty showers. In the wake of this front, temperature patterns will be rather more typical of the time of year. There may even be some meaningful rain on Sunday into Monday.