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Brisbane and Sydney's Wettest January washes up the skip bin business

News > Brisbane and Sydney's Wettest January washes up the skip bin business

In what should come as no surprise to soaked locals, Brisbane has recorded its wettest January in 38 years even though the Brisbane river didn't flood or cause the damage caused by the 2011 January rains.  In 2011 skip bins were reported to have been washed away in the flood the strength of the torrents of water were so strong. 

In early February Felim Hanniffy, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, reported that Brisbane had recorded 343mm of rain, making it the wettest January for the city since 1974.  "January is typically the wettest month of the year for the city with an average of 159.6mm of rain," Mr Hanniffy said. 

"The city actually started the month mostly dry, picking up only 4.8mm of rain in the first 15 days of January. It wasn't long before the rain picked up with January 16 officially kicking off the major rain event of the month."  "The heaviest falls were on January 24 when the city recorded over a month's worth of rain in just 24-hours picking up 168.4mm and the heaviest rain for over 13 years."  Mr Hanniffy didn't report any loss of skip bins in Brisbane as a result of the rain, only business for the Brisbane skip bin companies who didn't close for January.

"The rain of this month is significant because the last time Brisbane exceeded this total was during the infamous 1974 La Ninya. In this year 871.6mm of rain fell, the wettest January on record," Mr Hanniffy told  weather channel viewers.

Meanwhile in Sydney, Sydneysiders experienced a similar wash up of their summer holidays!  At Sydney Observatory Hill the weather station recorded 138.8 mm of rain during January, above the historical average of 101.2 mm and the wettest January since 2001.

Infact, amazingly this is only the first January since 2006 to have above average rainfall in Sydney. Across Sydney the rainfall was generally above average in the north eastern suburbs, breaking short-term records in Castle Hill and Chatswood. Most of the rain fell over 13-days, average for January, of which five exceeded 10 mm - double the historical average and the most since 1995.

The most significant rain events effecting Sydney skip bins in January were:

  • The widespread thunderstorm activity, caused 31.6 mm of rain to fall before 9am on the 9th at Sydney Observatory Hill
  • Further rain fell on the 15th and 16th of January when a low pressure trough crossed the coast during a period of easterly flow, with daily falls reaching 29 mm at Observatory Hill on the 15th and up to 62.5 mm at Merrylands West, enough to fill a paddling pool or create one in the bottom of the skip.
  • For Australia day on the 26th of January a special rain event caused a falls of 29.6 mm in Sydney,while 88.5mm of rain fell at Merrylands West, but surprisingly there were no reports of skip bins being washed away.

The bottom line to all this wet weather has been that the weekend renovators have been washed out and fewer than normal have been ordering skip bins.  Not only this but the construction industry which is often slow in January also ordered fewer skip bins as the wet weather made constructions sites quagmires more suited to mud wrestlers than skip bin trucks

  • Authored By:Steve Shergold
  • Updated:18/02/2012