While it might have seemed to be colder and certainly wetter last month, Ron Lakeman, forecaster for the Southeast Fire Centre, said May’s weather was normal.
“May typically is a wet month, the amount of rain was almost bang-on normal,” he said.
“I think the biggest thing that was noticeable in my book was that we didn’t have any extended period of warm, dry weather. It is fairly common in the month of May to get five to 10 days of sunny, warm weather where the temperature gets into the upper twenties or low thirties and that did not happen.
“As a result, in most people’s mind it was a dreary month.”
Last month over 70 millimetres of precipitation fell, just over the normal amount of 68 millimeters. The highest temperature recorded was on May 14, when the thermometers hit 26 degrees Celcius. The mean temperature was 12.3 degrees, and the lowest was -1.6 degrees, recorded on May 1.
“Some people have come to expect abnormally dry weather in May, we haven’t seen that for a couple years now,” Lakeman said. “When I looked back at the records, last May was actually wetter and cooler than this one.”