Another sign of the runaway — Melbourne’s first rainless August

Today was a rather difficult sleep for me due to the strong winds overnight. I was later to bed than I had been over the previous few days when I have been affected by a headache and went to bed extremely early a few nights ago.

Given that there is no rain in the forecast apart from today, I was eagerly awaiting rain from the moment I first briefly woke up around 7 o‘clock to go to the toilet — before getting a very interrupted sleep. I was looking for signs of rain all the time this morning and afternoon, trying half-heartedly to not discuss or look at the weather to see if it was going to rain. BOM forecasts are very unfavourable for significant rain but not so extreme as I was already anticipating from reading them about a week ago, when Melbourne was in danger of its driest July on record.

All along until around 4 P.M. I was anticipating rain, but when I finally bit the bullet and had a look at BOM’s forecast I found what I feared all along — that Melbourne was not going to get rainfall predicted with a ninety percent chance in the early morning forecast. There is no confident rain in the weekly forecast either, and I have no desire checking further ahead as the seasonal outlook is for very dry and hot weather.

Probable Weather for Remainder of 2023:

1. Melbourne will have its first ever rainless August
• the previous record dry August is 12.4 millimetres in 1903
• in fact there has never previously been an August with no rain in the first eight days, but none is forecasted from Saturday until well after that
2. Melbourne will not get any rainfall in September or October either, or maximally a small fraction of the sum of the monthly record lows of 19.4 millimetres
3. Melbourne’s dry spell record of forty days — ironically set following a record wet spell of 374 millimetres in 42 days and during the city’s wettest ever twelve months with 1,045.5 millimetres between October 1954 and September 1955 — will be beaten by a large margin during the normally rainy winter months
• if Melbourne beats it by the margin Sydney did in 1995 — 47 days vis-à-vis a previous record of 34 — Melbourne would go without rain for at least 55 days from 1 August until 24 September
• Even during the extreme droughts of 1914, 1982 and 2006, there was no rainless spell longer than 28 days
4. Melbourne’s annual rainfall will be below 332 millimetres virtually every year from 2024, and below 166 millimetres most years
5. Melbourne’s dams will be permanently dry soon after 2024, with the last runoff-producing rain having occurred this June

It has long occurred to me that runaway poleward movement of the frontal systems to well south of Tasmania is long overdue based on circulation changes observed since 1964. These changes would, as I noted four-and-a-half years ago, mean that Melbourne receives no more than 180 millimetres of rainfall per year — and possibly given topographic effects much less than that. With more frequent positive Indian Ocean Dipoles, that figure should decline still further to under 100 millimetres per year.

Such a rapid “catch-up decline” would put an end to most of the attractive feature of Melbourne that the Public Transport Users’ Association noted as already threatened a quarter of a century ago. It shows that runaway climate change was already a danger then. Moreover, the PTUA’s proposals were in fact not nearly radical enough. What was needed was 100 percent reduction in car use and a 100 percent reduction in Australia emissions no later than 2005. This was and is — via rational planning and expropriation of the rich polluters — achievable without mobility loss and indeed with mobility gain by eliminating congestion. In addition, even if this rational planning cannot does not reverse runaway climate change and the transformation of Melbourne into a hyperarid desert, it will mean that the polluters responsible are made to pay the cost.