Average year of weather for Bunbury

While temperatures and rainfall elsewhere pushed averages towards records across the State and country, Bunbury bucked the trend in 2018.

It was the third hottest year on record nationally and fourth hottest for Western Australia but Bunbury’s mean maximum temperature was 0.1 degree below average.

Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Neil Bennett said conditions in the State’s north early in the year bumped averages up.

“When you look at the stats for the whole State it was very warm but when you drill down into the individual areas and regions you realise there was individual pockets that weren’t,” he said.

“The Statewide averages were driven by big events going on in certain areas.

“The temperatures very much were driven by what was going on in the top end.”

It was similar conditions for much of the South West.

Rainfall during the year was also just below average due to a wet winter period.

“Things dried up in September but the winter period had persistent rain,” Mr Bennett said.

“From the beginning of June to the end of August we just had front after front and that was interspersed by some quite nasty weather at times as well. Some of those fronts produced some very severe weather.

“One in particular on June 4 stood out when we had gale winds and gusts of up to 100km/h through the South West which ended up with 40,000 homes without power.”

He said after the wet winter period a dry spring brought Bunbury back below the average rainfall for the year.

“People could have been thinking when was this ever going to end during winter because it was non-stop like someone flicked a switch at the beginning of June,” he said.

“It just rained all the way through.

“Overall for WA rainfall was above average but that was again driven by the very heavy rainfalls in the north at the start of the year from January through to February.

“Broome had its wettest year on record and nearly all of that fell in those two months.”