Each issue we will we bring you highlights of the recent weather experienced at Australia’s Antarctic stations. We thought that we’d start with Mawson station being, as it were, the western outpost, and the continental station (excluding the Antarctic Peninsula) with the longest continuous meteorological record. Next issue we'll move to Davis station.
Extremes for the year 2000
| Extreme | Value | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Highest air pressure | 1015.4 hPa | 1st September |
| Lowest air pressure | 953.1 hPa | 12th October |
| Highest minimum temperature | –00.6°C | 22 December |
| Lowest minimum temperature | –28.3°C | 18th May |
| Lowest maximum temperature | –22.5°C | 15th May |
| Highest maximum temperature | 03.8°C | 30th December |
| Highest maximum wind gust | SE @ 108 knots (200kph) | 02:08, 24th May |
Weather phenomena
Mawson is a dry but windy place as can be seen from the wind and snow data for 2000. There were 98 continuous days of strong wind (ie 22 knots or greater) between January 30th and April 5th 2000. The record is 101 days between 21st May and 29th August in 1967.
| Phenomena | Number of Days | % of the year |
|---|---|---|
| Strong wind (= >22 knots) | 340 | 93 |
| Gales (= >34 knots) | 196 | 54 |
| Blizzard | 32 | 9 |
| Snow fall | 49 | 13 |
| Blowing snow (=< 1km) | 58 | 16 |
A blizzard is defined as a period of > one hour when the visibility is reduced below 100m by blowing snow, the temperature is < 0°C and the wind speed is > 33 kts.
Records created in 2000
The following are the month by month extremes observed in 2000 which have been unmatched since February 1954 when records began. The values in brackets are the previous record value. In most of the months not mentioned there were values of one or more parameters which equalled a previous record.
January
Lowest 9am average Station Level Pressure: 978.9 hPa (982.1 hPa in ‘91)
Lowest 3pm average Station Level Pressure: 979.5 hPa (982.8 hPa in ‘71 & ‘91)
Most blizzard days for the month: 3 days (2 in ‘59, ‘62, ‘86, & ‘97)
February
Most strong wind days (note: 2000 is a leap year): 29 (28 in ‘56, ‘66,' 71,' 76, ‘86, & ‘91)
Windiest March, average wind-speed: 54.2 kph (51.2 kph in ‘96)
April
Windiest April, average wind-speed: 56.9 kph (55.1 kph ‘91)
May
Days of blizzard for the month: 7 (6 days in ‘69 & ‘99)
June
Days of blizzard most per month for the year: 23 (19 days in ‘68)
October
Most hours of sunshine for an October: 380.2 hrs. (310 hrs in ‘84)
Lowest maximum temperature for an October: –8.1ºC (–7.5 in ‘91)
Steve Pendlebury
Bureau of Meteorology, Hobart
Data contributed by Max Walsh
Senior Observer at Mawson for 2000