Btw went back through my storm records here. Here’s 2021 (thunder heard, hail spotted). The long term average here is meant to be 15 thunder days going off the historical Bureau records, though the count depends on having a diligent observer and is different if you use a 9am to 9am or calendar day count. I’ve always used calendar count which probably increases the total by perhaps 30% at a guess.
Jan 4 2
Feb 1 0
Mar 0 0
Apr 2 4
May 1 1
June 0 2
July 1 7
Aug 0 1
Sep 0 6
Oct 4 1
At this point in 2020 we had 18 thunder days, so down on last year.
So, in theory we are right on about average, but what we’ve really missed is the spectacular and we had barely any good coldies all winter. IMHO the best coldies actually happened in the April cold outbreak. I probably observe more storms here because the environment is so quiet so you can hear thunder from a long way away on some days. I have previously heard storms which have been as far away as Geelong under the right conditions.
The week ahead should add to this tally on Thursday
Apparently I’m moving to about the least stormy place in Australia but TBH I don’t believe the records. Howden has quite a lot of topography to the northwest which fires things up under the right conditions and also gets coldies. Be interesting to see what I record