It wasn’t just the rain that came down heavily earlier this month, several local records were also knocked off their pedestals. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Peter Cooke, who braved the downpour several times during some nights in order to empty the rapidly filling rain gauge before it overflowed, we have a very good record of how much actually came down during the worst of the rains. Here’s the raw data for the month of February up til the 19th.
Here’s how many records we set …
- On February 2nd we toppled the record for highest daily rainfall since records began in 1969, only to beat it again the next day with a total of 745mm.
- By February 4th we exceeded the highest rainfall ever recorded in February
- By February 7th we exceeded the highest recorded rainfall for any month in Paluma
While I haven’t checked if this is a new record, during the first 12 days of February we got more rain than we get during an average year in Paluma.
The heaviest period of rain lasted 4 days (Feb 1-4). Our total for this period 2004.7 mm) exceeded those in Cardwell and Ingham by a good margin.
If we are thinking that this event broke any national records then we would probably be wrong. During the rain from ex-cyclone Jasper in December 2023, Cape Tribulation recorded a maximum daily rainfall of 861.2mm and it did not receive the heaviest falls – this happened around Helensvale/Mungumby south of Cooktown, but there are no official BOM records for this location and time. Unofficial records suggest that 12-hour falls of more than 1m occurred and that 24-hour falls probably reached or exceeded 1.5m. These falls, had they been officially recorded may well have challenged global records for short-term rain events. Still, it is safe to say that we have burnished Paluma’s reputation as one of the wettest places in Australia. But don’t forget that compared to the top of Bellenden Ker, with a highest monthly and annual rain of 5.37 m and 12.46m respectively, we are barely even wet! And this is dwarfed by Mawsynram in India whose average is 11.87 m and highest annual rainfall, in 1985, was 26 meters !!