Melbourne and Victoria daily weather commentary

It didn't surprise me reading your report or hearing it this morning as people drive like maniacs through that region on the Calder!!! I saw a person driving at ~170kmh on Saturday coming back from Bendigo!! And black ice is like oil - very unexpected!!

A cold start here but above frost level thanks to northerly winds. 2C start.

-0.7C for a minimum this morning and very icy. Heavy frost thanks to moist atmosphere overnight with the cold temps. I suspected quite a bit of black ice all over the place so I had to drive pretty slow on the way to the railway station.

David, we don't get all that much severe frost here either. We get quite a few light ones and heaps of mornings below 2C, but usually only a handful of days a year with the min temp below 0C. I know that further up the mountain in some locations they never get radiation frosts. As a result of this we don't get severe frost damage in the garden and we do get tomatoes ripening (even if it is usually March/April )

I guess it all has to do with mountain/forest microclimate as opposed to exposed undulating and open elevated country like around Kyneton, Woodend and Trentham. Coldstream vs Ferny Creek is a good comparison for out east of Melbourne.

Re Frosts. 4 years ago I moved 9 doors up to the top of the hill and havnt seen a frost since, I really miss the pretty frozen bird baths. Is this because Im at the top of the hill or that there hasnt been any good frosts in this amount of time. The grass here is always very wet but never white.

Hey droughtbreaker, what is a radiation frost?

It's your standard frost that develops overnight due to radiation cooling i.e. heat from the ground being lost into the atmosphere between sunset and sunrise and in a moist atmosphere you get frost forming on the ground which is basically frozen dew.

Is this because Im at the top of the hill or that there hasnt been any good frosts in this amount of time.

Australis I would expect it is both. My perception is that we have not had many decent frosts out in the foothills in recent years - the first couple of years in the Dandenongs I recall quite a few hard frosts down in Boronia/FTG but recent years haven't seen so many.

Small altitude difference can make a big difference (as do changes in aspect). Some parts of the Dandenongs are very frost prone - the "flat" areas south of Mt Dandenong for example often gets sub-zero frosts despite being essentially on a ridge. Similar some areas of Sherbrooke. In our area we have a katabatic kick in every calm night which drifts down hill (from the north) at about 5 knots. This wind prevents an inversion from forming at night, and provides a constant supply of "warmer" air.

Curious thing that the katabatic means are that our coldest temperatures are usually (about) 1 hour after sunset and about 2 hours after sunrise. The first minimum is before the katabatic and the late minimum is as the rising sun breaks down the katabatic.... it's not unusual for it to drop 2C at our place between 6am and 9am.

I get similar patterns here David, the temperature plummets around sunset and a couple of hours afterwards and then stays constant or even rises a degree until close to dawn when the temp drops again. We don't have any local winds as this happens though, it remains calm all night.

A partly cloudy and very spring like day today, with fresh winds this evening and warm temperatures today generally, and some lightning could be seen to our west and south from that cell off the coast.

Re Frosts. Thanks for the reply. Im waiting on a bracket to be made to place my weather station on, then I will be able to take note more, other than getting out early rugged up and heading down that hill, which i will do "one day".

I am finding it interesting that alot of people recently have spoken about 'very springlike today'. When was the last time we spoke about 'very winterlike conditions today'?

Yeah, 10.9C here which is probably around 2 degrees above average for this time of year, (admittedly not exactly springlike but mild for July). What has been springlike is the sunshine and just high cloud around, as Tony points out it is the lack of 'winter-like' days that is causing us to think things are springlike.

In Melbourne this winter it has been sunny and cool to mild most days, much like places in the north are like in winter normally.

In saying that though the North of the state temps were below average today was only mild in and around Melbourne Mildura only 13c while in Melbourne 17c should be the other way round

Super frosty at my place on the mount today, didnt melt til lunchtime, -1C to a max of 6.4C, really chilly because it clouded over early in the arvo and it stalled the daytime max.
Was great to see a little sun this morning, felt "spring-like"! after all the grey weekends of late.
looks like it is going to be a snow-free July, very sad really. Still. i had my best fall ever in mid August last year, so definitely not out of he question yet. Going to hope for a big blizzard in August

Blowing a gale here. has been for the last hour..

Johnno wrote:In saying that though the North of the state temps were below average today was only mild in and around Melbourne Mildura only 13c while in Melbourne 17c should be the other way round

Yeah I have wondered why that has been the case, has to be more than just the heat island effect.

It's been non stop strong wind and gales here since about mid afternoon and squalls expected overnight. Wind chill is the main inconvenience with this sort of weather here. Early tomorrow morning is going to be hell standing on the railway platform. Expecting 3C temps, squally winds and showers perhaps heavy.

looking at the radar looks like a mean squall line developing along the change. Becoming lightning active too according to the lightning tracker.

Very windy here atm windy enough to blow an elephant off a chain!

Good to see the NE still getting some isolated falls

Very spring-like instability around, especially in the NE again. If it was 5-8 degrees warmer, there'd be a STW in place.

Yeah again another unstable day up in the uppers... would of love it to be Summer regarding temps... Alot of convection here too this afternoon.

Glad to see the end of the north wind and the warmth for a while. 7C in Prahran atm, it was 17.5C this time last night.Shocking.

We had a doozy of a frost here last night, -3.2! Coldest night for the year. The temp plummeted from about 5 pm, went past zero at about midnight and didn't stop till 7:20 am. Beautiful now, sunny and 15.4.

-0.7C here in the end, would have been some major frosts around the Woodend/Kyneton/Trentham triangle.

Interesting obs from Coldstream last night. Temp was dropping like a stone until the NE wind kicked in. Went from 0.4 at 11.30pm to 6.7 at 2.30am. Winds drop and then temps drops to -0.2 at 7.30am. A nice day ahead, but am getting excited about the next 48-72 hours

i don't get excited anymore, been disappointed many many times!