8.1  Weather conditions

The annual temperature, rainfall and evaporation averages for 2000/2001 were similar to the annual long-term averages. However, this did not reflect the high variation of the monthly weather conditions from the long-term monthly averages.

CSIRO Land and Water, Griffith supplied the temperatures shown in Table 8.1.  The main variation from the long-term average was in January where the maximum temperature average was 35.3 °C, compared to the long-term average for January of 31.8 °C.  The warm summer was beneficial to rice crops, especially in January, with a reduction in cold damage during the panicle initiation stage.

Table 8.1  Monthly temperatures recorded at Griffith

Evaporation, as shown in Figure 8.1, was slightly lower for this year, with no months being very different from the long-term average. 

Rainfall figures collected from CICL’s Works depot (Figure 8.2) show that rainfall in August, November and January was substantially higher than the long-term averages for these months.  January was an extremely wet month, with 100mm of rain.  This figure would have varied over the CIA, with landholders in some areas reporting as much as 150mm in one day from thunderstorms.

Figure 8.1  Monthly evaporation recorded at the CICL Works Depot

Figure 8.2  Monthly rainfall recorded at the CICL Works Depot