I was thinking tonight that I have jumped straight into this blog without any information about Canberra, where I live, or anything really about me at all.
I have been in the ACT for about 6 years now, and moved over here from Western Australia. To the uninitiated, Canberra can be quite the shock at first, especially when that first winter rolls around.
Canberra winters have a somewhat unnatural coldness to them. Geographically we are in Australian zones 1 or 2, which is approximately equivalent to zone 8-9 in the United States. Although most winter mornings will be frosty, and average between -2 to -5o Celsius, for some reason it always feels much colder than that. Or maybe it is just me! Every year Canberra routinely hits -6 or -7 at least once, and can drop as low as -9 or -10oC. During winter we have a maximum average temperature of about 12-15oC. Snow in Canberra is rare, but possible.
In direct contrast to this, summers in Canberra can be hot. Really hot. This year has been a demonstration of this, where we exceeded 40oC on at least 5 occasions, and had many days above 35oC. Historically the summer average maximums are about 30oC, so clearly 2013 is an extreme.
Canberra is one of the few places in Australia to have 4 actual seasons, and it often seems that the weather will change on the exact day as foretold by the calendar. It is on these occasions that you hear everyone throughout the city commenting on just how much it is like someone threw a switch. This Autumn, which began on March 1st was no exception, with the temperature plummeting exactly to the day. After March 1 however, this Autumn has been anything but typical with almost every day forecast between 28-31oC, and even today this trend is set to continue for at least the next 7 days. The papers are calling it a potentially record breaking heatwave, after a record breaking summer in Australia.
This year, for no other reason than 'I think so', my money is on this winter being equally as extreme, and we don't have much longer to wait to find out- one of the very first Canberran sayings I heard when I got to this fair city was that ANZAC day, April 25th is the herald for cold weather.
46 days and counting.
To prepare for winter I am currently making the most of this lingering heat, and have planted a few punnets of broccoli and brussel sprouts, to be planted out in April. I planted some peas into pots last weekend which have just today germinated, and have onions growing indoors, to be planted out in April. Next weekend, almost the Autumn equinox, I will be planting out garlic and saffron. More about these to follow in another post!
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