APRIL in Ballarat has produced double the annual rainfall and overall temperatures two degrees lower than average as winter arrives in 2020 with a vengeance.
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It's fortunate that many of us have been at home this past month, because April can best be described as a shocker on the weather front.
And May doesn't look like it will get any better either with more than 14mm falling between midnight and 9am on Friday morning while another 15mm was expected to fall up until midnight. That would mean, Ballarat would have seen half its annual May rainfall in the first 24 hours of the month.
While May is ahead, looking back on April can be best described as cold and wet.
Only five times for the whole of the month did the temperature get above 20 degrees, with the warmest day coming on April 1, reaching 22.4 degrees. April 30 was our coldest day at 11 degrees.
Temperature wise, Ballarat averaged out at just 16.2 degrees, exactly two degrees down on the monthly average of 18.2 degrees.
Rainfall was pretty much double that of the usual for the month with 104mm falling, up on the usual 51.3mm.
The wettest day occurred on April 4 when 30.6mm fell, making it the wettest day so far this year.
But of course that does not include the more than 200mm which fell in the Burrumbeet area back in January, but failed to register any significant totals in the Ballarat gauge located at the airport.
So far this year Ballarat has officially received 246.8mm. At the same time last year, just 46.4mm had fallen before the drought broke in May.
While it was wet in Ballarat, it was even worse in Melbourne with 138mm falling for the month, the wettest April since 1960 when 195mm fell.
To 9am on Friday morning, Melbourne had received 408.8mm for the year, equaling the wettest ever start to the year, the same total as in 1924.
However, further rain during the day meant that is now officially the wettest start to the year in the city on record.
Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Dean Stewart said there's been some falls well over 150mm across the state with 238mm at Whitlands, north of Mansfield being the highest.
Mr Stewart said parts of Western Victoria would see strong winds into Saturday with snow levels falling as low as 900m.
"We'll get gradual improvement throughout the weekend, winds will taper off, but there will be some isolated showers particularly in the south but totals should be less than 5mm," Mr Stewart said.
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