The Bureau of Meteorology has released its January climate summaries, showing the month was the warmest on record for Corowa, Rutherglen and many parts of Australia.
Albeit the region has welcomed 32.5mm of rain in February, Corowa had 12 days in January where the mercury reached at least 40℃ which influenced the average daily temperature of 36.9℃, smashing the 32℃ average recorded from 1971-2017.
The 12 days exceeding 40℃ included a stretch of six days between January 12-17, and five consecutive days from January 21-25.
The lowest temperature recorded for the area from 9am was 24°C and an overnight low of 11°C.
The Victorian north-east also experienced one of the driest January’s on record.
The mean temperature for January across the country exceeded 30 degrees, the first time this has occurred in any month.
Rutherglen locals may remember a sleepless night January 24 after officially breaking a record since official data has been collected from the town’s weather station since 1913 – where a minimum of 29.3°C was reached overnight.
Rutherglen’s official average for the month of January was 37.2°C – including 10 days above 40°C and a high of 45.9°C on January 16 – smashing the 31.3°C average recorded from 1913-2017.
Bureau senior climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins said the heat through January was unprecedented.
“We saw heatwave conditions affect large parts of the country through most of the month, with records broken for both duration and also individual daily extremes,” Dr Watkins said.
“The main contributor to this heat was a persistent high-pressure system in the Tasman sea which was blocking any cold fronts and cooler air from impacting the south of the country.
“At the same time, we had a delayed onset to the monsoon in the north of the country which meant we weren’t seeing cooler, moist air being injected from the north.
“The warming trend which has seen Australian temperatures increase by more than one degree in the last 100 years also contributed to the unusually warm conditions.”
Both NSW and Victoria recorded its warmest January on record for mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures.
Rainfall was more than 26 per cent below average on both sides of the river, Corowa receiving 9.7mm and Rutherglen just 10mm.
Corowa also broke records during December with the month’s hottest ever day of 44°C, beating the previous hottest 42.5°C day set in 1972.