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Here’s another reason to be grateful you’ve been spending so much time at home. Melbourne has just experienced it’s second wettest start to the year since records began, with 400.8mm of rain falling on the city between January and April 2020. The four-month deluge is only beaten by the 1924 record of 408.8mm – meaning it hasn’t rained this much between January and April in almost a century.
The torrential downpour also means that Melbourne has had more rain in the first four months of 2020 than it had during the entirety of 2019. To be fair, 2019 was Australia’s warmest and driest year on record (and the earliest records date back to 1900).
April has been a particularly moist month, with the highest April rainfall since 1960. Some sites like Wallan, Coldstream and Melbourne Airport received almost double their average rainfall, while Lancefield in the Macedon Ranges had its highest daily rainfall ever (88mm) on April 4.
It’s also been colder than usual, a fact that has not escaped me or the three layers of socks I’ve been wearing since Anzac Day. The mean maximum daytime temperatures across Greater Melbourne have been one degree below the April average.