Tamworth weather: September 2016 saw floods, now Tamworth is in drought

The result, flooding of Tamworth and surrounds in 2016 during the wettest September on record.

Bureau of Meteorologist climatologist Simon Grainger said a large El Nino event warmed the ocean atmosphere on a large scale.

“At the start of 2016, Australia was being affected by that so it was very dry, but in the winter once that El Nino finished it was quite wet across NSW and the Tamworth area,” he said.

“There had already been a lot of rainfall so I imagine the soil had already been pretty wet, in September of 2016 Tamworth saw the wettest September since our records began.

“And our records go back to 1900.”

On September 14 2016, Tamworth received 41.2 millimetres of rain, a stark contrast to the same month two years later.

Tamworth saw good rain levels until March 2017, but it’s been below average since across almost all of NSW.

“Into 2018 there’s been very little rain since January, in the Tamworth area that rainfall since January has been the third driest on record,” Mr Grainger said.

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“And the driest since 1965 [in the January to August period].” The dry weather comes down to persistent high pressure systems over eastern Australia, so the weather systems that would usually bring in rainfall aren’t happening. This year Tamworth temperatures have been the warmest on record since 1910.

That has contributed to the severity of the conditions this year compared to previous droughts, Mr Grainger said, and the forecast for spring isn’t much better.

“The most likely scenario is increased chances of below median rainfall for spring in NSW and above average daytime temperatures,” Mr Grainger said.

“In a nutshell our climate outlook for spring is for warm and dry conditions to continue, that’s a three month outlook.”

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