R's questions "What is your favorite season down under. Winter sounds lovely to me."
I like winter in Sydney when I can bring out my jackets and boots, enjoy cosy open fires, but because the cold season is short the tendancy is to not heat our homes sufficiently for comfort. Summer is humid with lots of fun activities as it includes Christmas and January which is holiday season. But Spring and Autumn are my personal favourites. I love the changing landscape, the variety in temperature, the crisp chill in the air with the hot sun on my back. Australia is so large, like USA, the full range of climate exists, so I can only speak for the coastal area of the state of New South Wales. Because Sydney's coastal suburbs are surrounded by seawater, temperature conditions are buffered, and sea breezes keep the hot days cool. Head out west, even a few kilometres, and the extremes are greater. You won't see snow in Sydney, and even frosts are rare near the coast.
We average a metre of rain, 40 inches, each year, but few years are average years. There is no rainy season, and the rain usually goes quickly, but sudden storms can be common, and "showers" means downpours in some places and nothing a few hundred metres away. Learn to live with it.
Flowering Shrubs Still Blooming
Our hottest months are December to February, during the southern summer. Our flowers largely ignore the seasons, so you can usually see about 30 species in flower as you walk along a suburban street, and at least that number species of wildflower can be in bloom any time from May to December, with a few less in January-April. The best time for wildflowers is in August, when a walk over a headland can reveal 60 species in bloom.
The temperature scale in common use is the Celsius scale, often referred to as the Centigrade scale. If you prefer the Fahrenheit scale, divide by 5, multiply by 9, and add 32, or use this rule of thumb: 0° is freezing, 10° is chilly, 20° is comfortable, 30° is getting warm, 40° is a heat wave.
In summer, the temperature can reach the high 30s on a bad day, and will occasionally drop down to 17 at night, but the summer temperatures are more typically somewhere in the twenties.
In winter, the temperature can go as low as 5 degrees, with a wind chill factor on top of that, and reach freezing away from the coast. Even so, a winter's day when the temperature fails to reach 15 degrees is a cause for grumbling. The temperature, in other words, is generally mild. If you need to wear a coat, be prepared to take it off later, and if it isn't coat weather, it might be handy to carry something warm, as you may need it later, especially if a southerly change comes in.
In winter, the ocean temperature falls to about 15 degrees, while in summer it can rise to about 21 or 22.
There are people who swim the whole year around in Sydney, but these are generally regarded as eccentric: few people swim in June, July or August. Board riders surf all year around in wet-suits, and people will lie on the sand or paddle in the shallows all through the year.
I have to admit that it is close to Paradise.
Clara
