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Okay, we get it, Ballarat is cold.
Yes, we know people shiver upon hearing the name of our town. Yes, we can be hit with four seasons in one day. Yes, it did snow in Ballarat this winter.
But put a jumper on, turn the heater up and deal with it - we certainly have. But Ballarat wouldn't be Ballarat without its contradictory weather in a 24-hour period.
Frankly, we're proud of it.
Five things you may not know about Ballarat weather:
- Ballarat keeps its cool: Ballarat is 400 metres higher than Melbourne. One hundred metres of altitude generally converts to one degree of temperature. So while Melbourne swelters with an average of ten days over 35 degrees per year Ballarat has only two.
- Ballarat is sunnier than Melbourne: Despite public perception, Ballarat has a mean of 55 clear days per year. Melbourne has only just over 48. They share roughly the same mean number of cloudy days per year; Ballarat 180.2 Melbourne 179.4
- Wet enough? Ballarat's annual average rainfall total of 691mm is not far off Melbourne's total of 648mm and certainly drier than many of its eastern suburbs, including Kew, Mentone, Moorabbin and Coldstream. Mean annual rainfall for Ballarat also comes in lower than seaside city of Warrnambool.
- Fancy a frost? Despite Ballarat's notoriety the temperature is more likely to drop below zero in old rival Bendigo, which has an 6.3 mean days under the freezing point per year. Sunny Horsham has an amazing 11.3 days. If you like extremes the Wimmera capital has almost 19 days on average over 35 degrees C.
- Windy city: As locals know it is Ballarat's place near the top of the Divide that makes it windy and it is the wind that often makes it seem so cold. The daily wind run (a total of mean wind speeds) 444km is almost twice that of Melbourne that comes in at 234km.
Source: Bureau of Meteorology
