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Adelaide facing driest summer in 33 years

Source Weatherzone Thu 20 Feb 2025

That crunch you hear as you walk across what's left of the grass in an unwatered Adelaide park is the sound of a summer that could be the city’s driest in 33 years. To date in the summer of 2024/25, Adelaide has received a total of 21.2mm of rain, with just 6.6mm of that falling this year. That's just under a third of the long-term summer average of 66.7mm. If no significant rain is recorded between now and the end of February, it will be the driest summer since the summer of 1991/92, when the city received just 17mm. Other dry summers in recent decades include 1998/99 with 25mm, and 2018/19 with around 30mm. Adelaide's driest summer on record was 1905/06, when a paltry total of 4mm of rain fell. Image: The dessicated landscape at Laura near Port Pirie in South Australia's Mid North forecast district. Source: Gillian Fennell. So Adelaide is not quite in record-setting territory at the moment, but as despairing locals will tell you, the current dry summer is a continuation of a prolonged dry spell which has now lasted for more than a year. In 2024, Adelaide had just 346.6mm compared to the long-term average of 526mm. That was just under two-thirds of the annual average. Only one month in 2024 (June) saw above-average rainfall in Adelaide, and not by much. Every other month was much drier than usual. Adelaide is of course not the only place with an ongoing severe rainfall deficit. Parched paddocks are par for the course in virtually all of southeastern SA as well as large parts of western Victoria. Image: Rainfall was very much below average or even the lowest on record for most of mainland Australia’s southern coastline and nearby areas in 2024. That pattern has continued in most of those areas in 2025 so far. What are the chances of significant Adelaide rain before the end of summer? Not great, unfortunately. After another burst of heat on Saturday, a cool but largely dry change will sweep through southeastern SA. Adelaide will drop from a maximum of around 38°C on Saturday to 26°C on Sunday, while Mount Gambier will go from around 40°C to 23°C across those two days. It's likely that neither city will receive more than a few millimetres of rainfall, with Adelaide possibly seeing no rain at all – as an active Southern Ocean low pressure system and associated cold front stay just too far south to drive significant amounts of moisture onshore. The early signs for next week are that Adelaide will again be sunny and warm with top temps in the 30s, while another change later in the week will again deliver minimal moisture. And that'll just about wrap it up for a very dry summer, which ends next Friday, February 28. - Weatherzone © Weatherzone 2025