No relief yet for Albany’s big dry

Albany was the place to be in WA to find relief from the State’s second-hottest summer on record.

But the city’s run of dry weather has continued, with Albany receiving less than half its average summer rainfall.

The Bureau of Meteorology released its climate summary for summer this week, declaring Albany as the town with the lowest average maximum temperature across WA at a mild 23C.

Mt Barker recorded the single coolest day of summer among the bureau’s weather stations at 17C.

In a summer when WA’s average minimum temperature was the highest on record, Rocky Gully had the coolest nights at an average of just 12.6C.

Albany and North Walpole tied for the average coolest summer temperature overall with 19.7C.

Some might remember Albany’s hottest day of the summer on December 15 when the mercury hit a toasty 38.4C at Albany Regional Airport.

While cyclone Blake brought record summer daily rainfall totals to parts of the north of WA, Albany received just 33.4mm — 44 per cent of its average summer total.

Most other weather stations in WA met or exceeded their averages. Further north, Lake Grace and the Newdegate Research Station recorded their highest average summer maximums.

At 32.2C for Lake Grace and 23.5C for Newdegate, they were about 2C higher than their historic averages.

Katanning, Lake Grace and Newdegate only received about half their average summer rainfall.