Our Weather 2024

[Steph S]

We had a second huge snowstorm after the first one, so there was a lot of shoveling and weary waiting for snow to melt through march and into april.  So there was excellent snow cover and no worries about drought.
Lately there's been a lot of rain, drizzle and fog.  The garlic is up and looking good, and the grass is starting to green up.  We could do with some sunshine.
Overall the timing for spring is pretty normal. We had no sea ice this winter but ice forecast for the time of year is about normal in spite of higher than normal air conditions:  lots of icebergs north of us, so will likely see some as may goes on, the usual chill.

[Richard Watson]

There's no sign of the drought breaking here that started in mid Dec, only had 61mm of rain this year so far. Winter is when we get most of our rain, so hopefully its not too far off.

[reed]

61mm in nearly half a year, that doesn't sound good, hopefully it will change soon. In the past couple of weeks, we have had that much in a couple of hours, two or three times. It's also been very warm, almost mid-summer like temperatures and staying warm at night. After the last round of storms, that fortunately wasn't too bad right here it turned cool for a couple of days. Yesterday was just 23 or so for a high and beautiful blue sky, today is supposed to be similar but then back to summer after that, I suspect. 

[Richard Watson]

61mm in nearly half a year, that doesn't sound good, hopefully it will change soon.   

Its so dry that even my pine trees are suffering die back. Lost 7 Eucalyptus trees so far, though the species are from wetter areas of Aust

[reed]

Very sad. I lost a stand of big Norwegian Spruce a few years back. I had planted them when I moved here to block the view of the road. They actually came from a wetter, cooler place too I suppose but the species had grown here all my life and way before. There were some huge ones in the town where I grew up but as far as I know there are none left around here now.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

In my village, the lifespan of Blue Spruce is about 70 years, though they might live hundreds of years in their preferred ecosystem.

[reed]

Blue spruce died out here as well, but I don't think it was the increased heat and drought that did them in. Bugs and disease seemed to be the issues there. Although, I don't think any new bugs or diseases were in play, the trees just didn't seem to tolerate them anymore. Woodpeckers pecked mine to death, but I guess they must have been after bugs.  Black hill spruce seems oblivious to it all, but they grow so slow. After thirty years mine still look beautiful but are only maybe five feet taller than when I planted them.

My brother has a concolor fir tree, what a beautiful thing it is, and it smells wonderful. He keeps it heavily mulched and waters it frequently in the summer. I don't know where they are native too but wherever it is lucky to have them.

[Cathy A]

Increased heat can indirectly affect rainfall, and both warmer temperatures and changes in rainfall can affect the range and density of insects.

It's never just one thing. Everything in a biological system is connected.

[Steph S]

We had infestations of bark beetles on the larch Larix laricina here when they were stressed by a couple of dry years.  They are flood tolerant and water loving trees, so the drought seems to reduce their resistance or attracts the pest to attack them.  Likewise the other conifers do tend to see attrition in drought conditions due to beetles or others.
My area has a lot of white spruce as well as the black spruce.  Their lifespan is about 80 years here, although there may be a few older.   The balsam fir is our fast growing tree - they do smell absolutely amazing, especially in July or August in the heat, when blisters full of resin form all over the tree, the entire forest is full of their scent.   
The fir is actually the boreal compost tree.  Fast growing, thickets germinate and grow even in the shade and then fall over or die from overcrowding, and the wood decays quickly and builds soil.  Spruce needs sunshine, grows more slowly, and the wood is very hard and resistant to decay, excellent for building.
Fir can sprout new branches low on the trunk, if trees fall or are cut around them letting in light.  So they can become balanced and continue to grow after a major disturbance.  Spruce can't do that, so if the tree doesn't get enough sun to keep its lower boughs, it will have a hard time to survive the wind or to fill out in spite of being given light, if it didn't have all its branches.  It can only sprout from the roots.  Spruce's last trick is that if it blows over and branches contact the ground, they can sprout up and become trunks, thus making a line of spruces from one tree.  Fir don't do that.

[Richard Watson]

The Norwegian Spruce does well in NZ which you see a lot of, I replanted with these by directly sown seed after losing 90% of my western shelter belt of Pinus radiata, they got hit by a 173 kmph gust/107mph( I have a state owned weather station in my paddock), they dont handle wind well. One tree that never blows over is the Sequoia giganteum
My problem here is when the weather is wet the water table can be as high as 1m below ground, so trees dont like putting there roots down into the water. Then the local farmers pump it where it gets down to around 4m out of reach of the tree roots. Once the Southern Alps foothills do get rain it only takes two weeks for our local river to full the water table up again.

[Adrian]

Its raining since two days in continue.
Some thunderstoms with strongs winds
Some fields are inondated while they are sowed.

[Steph S]

I'm betting that many of the weather stories this year are about the heat.
I got some gear - a base station and remote sensors - to keep track of temperature and RH on site, and it's been much hotter here than the airport weather station.  Pretty well all of july has been in the high 80's and low 90's F in the yard here.  The good news for me, at least for the tomatoes, has been that relative humidity on site tends to the dry side, and we haven't had as much seriously muggy weather as the previous two years.
We did just have a week of dewpoints over 20C/ 70F ish, which was not fun, but it's finally broken with no serious damage in its wake. 
June we had record rainfall, twice the normal amount.  This has caused some of my garlic to split, but it all dried up really quickly in the July heat.  Definitely a very hot July here.

[Richard Watson]

Starting to get warmer days now, big (for here) -7 C deg frosts at night. Been a dry year so far with only 148mm or 6in, so hoping for some spring rains otherwise its not looking good for the summer ahead.

[whwoz]

Starting to warm up slightly here in South East Oz, some frosts down to -3C/27F.  Days are around 15C/57F.  Rainfall has been sporadic, most months around 50 mm/ 2 inches, but a couple of months up over 5 inches, with July 167 mm/6.7 inches leaving us with our 6th wettest year out of the last 20.

[reed]

It's been hovering around 90 F here for several weeks and extremely dry for most of the season. The drought finally broke with about 5 - 6 inches over a few days and now it's back to hot and humid. The cloudy wet period felt great but now the weeds and grass have exploded. I'm cleaning the garden up, ripping out some spent or failed crops and preparing to plant some fall stuff.

Sweet potatoes are loving it, but seeds are at risk. They can sprout in the capsules in very wet and warm temperatures even if the capsule is still green. It never happens to all of them and there are lots, so no real worries. Much worse is cool, wet weather, where they can rot in immature capsules.