Weather News

Hot and cold morning

Ben Domensino, Thursday April 11, 2019 - 16:41 AEST

Minimum temperatures varied by nearly 30 degrees between parts of WA and SA on Thursday morning.

Despite being adjacent states, the combined land mass of WA and SA is large enough to separate two distinct climate zones and cause a large range in temperature.

Wednesday morning's minimum temperatures dropped below zero degrees in parts of SA, including minus 0.8 degrees at Gluepot and minus 0.3 degrees at Padthaway. This was Padthaway's lowest temperature this early in the year in 32 years.

But while parts of SA were shivering, temperatures were oppressively high in WA's Pilbara. Wednesday morning's minimum temperatures were as high as 28.4 degrees at Onslow and 28 degrees at Karratha. Meekathurra's low of 27.9 degrees was its highest April minimum in more than 90 years of records, beating the previous record by more than a degree.

Large temperature ranges across the Australian continent are common at this time of year. The country's vast size has been known to produce temperature ranges of more than 50 degrees on the same day.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2019

Enter a postcode or town name for local weather, or text to search the site. » advanced search

Weather News

» all stories

Generation gone with the wind

13:20 AEST A weeklong stretch of low wind power was broken on Wednesday evening, as a weak cold front marched across southern Australia. The chart below shows that the National Electricity Market (NEM) has endured a weeklong stretch of low wind generation, with wind power providing around 6% of the NEM’s electricity, down from last year’s average of 13.1% (Mon, April 15 to Wed, April 17).