
The characteristic green rolling hills of Beechmont are getting pretty brown at the moment. Residents are anxiously awaiting the first good rain of the season.
A concept that measures the break of the dry season is “the green date”.
This is the date when there is likely to be 50mm of rain over 3 days after 1st September, 7 years out of ten.
Using data captured locally in Beechmont the green date for the last ten years is in the first week of December. It means that in the last 10 years there has been 50mls of rain over a three day period by the first week of December in seven out of the 10 years
It is not unusual to not have had any decent spring rain in Beechmont. The Climateapp tells us that since 1990 we haven’t had 50mm of rain over three days in Spring in 12 of the 34 years.
What is unusual though is that looking back at the last 12 months the total rainfall has been very low.
According to the Climateapp Beechmont is experiencing one of its driest 12 months on record.
Anticipating the dry spring Beechmont Landcare reduced the number of trees it planted and spread lots of mulch around to reduce moisture loss from the soil.
We are also very grateful to our team of volunteers who have given their time to watering the plants, limping them through this dry time.