I just thought I'd start a weather topic that is about the warm season in the Southern Hemisphere, but if your up in the North, feel free to take part too.

We just had the warmest night so far of 23C after a day of 31C, but no thunderstorms mentioned actually came. They are predicting a humid 30C today, and at 8.30am it's already past 28C. I watered like mad last night, so things will start to get into overdrive in the garden with this. My little R oleracea is now about as tall as me and is pushing about 3cm of spear a day. Going at this rate it will have pushed 7 or 8 new leaves by the time winter arrives.

This isn't bad weather for us this early in the season. Last year was dismall with temps around 20C, nights around 8C, cloudy and rainy at this same time in Oct. This year will be a real quality palm growing season I think.

regards

Tyrone

As posted in another thread, heres the data from my weather station for October 2006 thus far.  I am at 28.192N / 82.7557W.

Sorry its in Fahrenheit

DATE MONTH MAX TEMPERATURE MIN TEMPERATURE

1 October 86.7 65.1

2 October 90.7 67.8

3 October 89.2 70.9

4 October 89.1 70.3

5 October 89.6 68.5

6 October 86 67.5

7 October 86.9 68

8 October 82.2 66.9

9 October 77.9 61.9

10 October 80.6 61.9

11 October 83.7 64.6

12 October 85.1 69.8

13 October 85.1 65.7

14 October 80.8 65.8

15 October 83.5 61

16 October 85.3 67.1

17 October 84.6 70.9

18 October 88 73.4

19 October 87.4 73.4

20 October   87.4 73

As usual our Spring weather is crazy. Last week we had 37c and 36c maximums two days running, followed by only 17c several days later.

Thursday was 30c, yesterday 29c and today just 16c after a strong southerly change.

Here is the days forecast for Brazil, also down south.  Although locally here in Amazonas we are going into our winter season, which is the rainy season the country as a whole is going into summer.  

Hi Guys

Been good here: Lots of rain, warm to hot humid days and nights havent touched below 19c for a good while. Palms are growing great guns!

Cheers

Dennis

I'm totally envious of your weather Dennis. You are really quite tropical in Durban.

Is that one of the Verschafeltia's you had mentioned  a while back planting against a wall area. Looks good.

My sucesses this last cold season, were a protected Areca catechu, an Areca vestiara which is kicking on in the warmth now, a protected Satakentia, and some J altifrons in my greenhouse. The catechu and Satakentia will be unprotected next winter, so that will test them, but I think they'll be OK. I like giving things the best treatment early on, but after that they're on there own. I plan to try a Carpoxylon this winter with some assistance from plastic. My large H indica is probably going to successfully flower this summer, I can see that it is "pregnant" at the moment with a bulge forming rapidly under the crownshaft. Some fresh locally grown seed should be awesome for germination.

regards

Tyrone

hm, your winter (that's what we call the season when it is meant to be cold) has just finished and you already report temps warmer than our summer temps.

Hi Guys

Temps are good here but no rain, very dry, very sad.

Snow is forecast down to 600-700m on the Great Divide tomorrow in the south.

It got to 30C today. Retics been going a lot.

It's 29C and humid tomorrow, and now it's hot and muggy inside at 9pm. Nothing below 24C for the next week, mainly mid twenties. Very stable weather.

Dennis, nice pic of the indica. If you can find one try a Satakentia again. I think you may have had a dud. Mine although covered thru winter, pushed a spear, opened it, and was pushing a second before I pulled the cover off. I watered it every few days so that the plastic sweated a great deal. I don't think these want to dry out at all in winter, cos where they come from it rains all year round from cold fronts in winter to monsoonal activity in summer. The winter weather on the Ryukyus is around 14C min to 18-20C during the day and moist, so my thoughts that if they dry out in winter they could be history. A friend of mine put his little satakentias at about 4 leaf stage into a rock pebble garden bed arrangement that gets a few hours of fullsun in winter and although they yellowed a bit, they bulked up really stumpy and are taking full warm sun at the moment here in Perth. My friend likes torturing his palms and he gets some surprising results like with his Calyptrocalyx which he treated exactly the same. It lived and grew thru winter!!

Anyway if you can find a Satakentia, grab it, it should grow for you, you must have had a dud I think.

regards

Tyrone

It's 32C at the moment and too hot to work outside. It looks like a big thunderstorm cell is heading my way according to the radar. Summer is definitely here.

It's just the opposite over here, Tyrone; cool and very windy. There are some bushfires in the Blue Mountains, not helped by these cool but strong southerlies.

It's been weird weather over here. Weather has been warm into the low 30's C, but today was windy, and  cloudy with thunderstorms in the mid twenties, with a tropical depression coming down the coast. The trend for the next few days is this low to hang around off the coast with unsettled showers and storms for the next week. Good growing weather.

South Florida is hot, In the winter months its hot its always hot. Someone please turn on the AC.

Hmmm, back to 17c maximum on Thursday. Could be the coldest November day for a while.

November has been averaging around 15-16min to 26-27C max. Glorious. Yesterday was 34C and today they're forecasting 34C. Tomorrow 30C and rain. We've been getting a fair amount of humidity too. The highest if seen on the humdiity meter in the last few days was over 90% at night.

Crap: Hail,  temps close to a June minimum. Still not a lot of rain.

Today according to the records for Port Macquarie a low of 8C is the record to beat for Nov, its now 9C in my backyard and raining.

Mike

I feel for you guys in the SE with all that southerly wind crap and cold fronts. You are reliving the west coast a year ago. When you were having 40C plus temps we were getting rain and SW cold fronts and temps in the low twenties. We really didn't get summer last year. This year in the west is a copy of the east coast a year ago. The temps night and day have been consistent and warm with an abundance of humidity and everything is going great in the garden. We're expected to get 36C next Thursday. If it gets that warm and no more this summer I'll be happy, but somehow I think we'll get an abundance of 40C days which I'm not looking forward too.

I noticed Brisbane last night had dewpoints around 20C but when I clicked on the BOM this morning the dewpoint had dropped to neg 5C. What's with that??? Real crap that is. I hope the east gets some serious warm rain soon.

regards

Tyrone

Sydney had it's coldest november day in 101 years today...looked pretty cold on the news.

It's not too bad here in southern QLD..days are still OK, but the cool clear sky last night and tonight have put our minimums down to 12C. Luckily these cold blasts lose their intensity once they travel this far north of Antarctica.

My main concern has been the supercells we have been hit with in the last week...three direct hits on my place...good for rain, luckily the hail fell just south of me...others weren't so lucky.

Don't you just love storm season...

Daryl

Daryl, yes, 8.3c degrees was the lowest November temp sine 1903. The max of 15c was unusually cold too, though a long way above the 12c recorded in November about 20 years ago.

I thought it was safe to but my 2 bottles out in the garden  for the summer. Our area recorded lows that potentially will kill them.   I will have to wait and see when I get back.

It's not a pretty picture here at the moment with uncontained fires burning in the Blue Mountains and hot and windy weather forecast for the next two days. One of the problems is that last week's cold spell drove out any moist air, and none has been able to leak back in from the Coral/Tasman seas.

Certainly our weather do not take its normal path.- This past week we had another record.-

In the mountains of here there was temperatures of 36º C. and a snow with -2º C in the same week of november (spring).-

EXTREMELY DRY, DESERTIC.- Plants suffering the lack of rains.-

Where are the rains??  Are up there? Read that theres dry in Australia, so where is rainning? Where are our argentine november clouds?

The overnight minimum in Sydney was an amazing 26.7c and today's max was 38c. There's a nice southerly change blowing outside now and the temperature has tumbled , but unfortunately no rain to speak of.

The fires are still out of control, but amazingly no property is threatened.

One sign of changing climate is the invasion of a range of types of cockroaches which were unheard of in Melbourne until recently.  They are every where in our garden now,  and clearly now survive winter,  whereas the may not have in the past.

Our weather is dry and a bit cool................for this time of year,  but we are getting lots of sun each day !

It's about 41C here at the moment and I'm inside with the air con on. It's too hot to do anything outside. I've been watering lots. We're meant to have high humidity for the next few days. Tonight will be 21C min and tomorrow will be 33C and humid. If I can keep things from burning, there are a lot of growth degrees in this weather.

Tyrone

The last few days have reminded me of Cairns. Mins around 22-23C, max's in the low 30's dewpoints around 21C and thunderstorms with the odd shower. Clouds and overcast with almost no wind. Very muggy. Great growing weather. Palms think they're in Hawaii

Tyrone