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With an overnight temperature of 17.9°, summer has come early to our notoriously fickle Melbourne weather with more record-breaking temperatures being set.

The last 2 days have given rise to the warmest temperatures on record for the start of August. Yesterday reached a sweltering 23.1° and with a forecast top of 21° today, no doubt more records may still be broken.

It’s hard to believe that only a week ago we were seeing maximum temperatures in the low teens. Today people are down the beach in shorts and T-shirts. Funnily, a friend of mine came back from watching the Tour de France and commented how much warmer it was in Melbourne compared to the summer he had experienced in Paris.

The Mercury didn’t dip below 17.9° from midnight, smashing a previous record of 16° set on 20th August, 1885. However, it was only last Winter (2010) that we had a balmy 14° at boot camp, so I guess nothing about the weather is really surprising anymore.

But rest assured, Melbourne will still live up to its reputation for 4 seasons in one day. Maximum temperatures will be back to the usual 13 to 15° by the weekend.

Written by Andrew Talati

Crazy weather in Melbourne saw a massive storm over Victoria go to sunshine a few hours later then back to rain and hail all within eight hours.

Storm over Victoria at 3.00am

Well Melbourne is well and truly living up to its reputation for having four seasons in one day. At 3am in the morning an unusually large storm covered most of Victoria with squally winds gusting at over 50 knots and heavy rain. I usually sleep through anything but the ferocity and intensity of this one must have woken most of Melbourne.

Clar skies over Melbourne

But amazingly, within six hours we had the most beautiful blue skies, sunshine and absolutely no reminder of the treacherous weather that had passed over.

Hail and rain over Melbourne

Well the blue skies didn’t last long. Just as quickly as we had magnificent weather the dark clouds started rolling in and the wintery weather returned. At first the skies looked dark and ominous but not threatening, so Anthony from our office thought it was a good time to move his car to avoid being booked by parking inspectors. Within the 10 minutes it took to move the car the rain started and gradually deteriorated to hail as the temperature plummeted.

However on a positive note it gave Anthony the opportunity to get a quick 400 m sprint back to the office to avoid being soaked. Nothing like a quick work out to get you warm and minimise the drenching

With a cold 3.5 degrees at boot camp this morning, I always say that the hardest part of getting yourself to an exercise class is putting your feet on ground from your bed.

The distance may only be 3 to 4 feet however this can present many challenges at 5.30am in the morning when hitting that snooze button for an additional 10 minutes sleep is very hard to resist.

Yet once you are all the rest is easy as at some point need to venture out into the cooler weather to either go to work or to a gym, fitness studio or outdoors if you’re doing a boot camp. The funny thing is that once your warm find that very quickly you’ll be down to a T-shirt entering a smart and it’s when you’re grabbing a drink you will find steam rising from your body.

One thing that you’ll experience is absolutely amazing sunrises and iridescent blue skies following the previous clear nights skies and cool mornings. Whilst most people are snoozing and oblivious to the most absolutely magnificent sunrises.

We’re very fortunate in Australia went by our morning temperatures rarely get below 4° unlike other countries around the world. For instance in Scandinavia if you go training outdoors you need to keep moving as your perspiration quickly freezes if you stay stationary for any given time.

While there were predictions of above average rainfall for this winter, this has been revised to average rainfall. Luckily this week has been rain free for our boot camp training so we have enjoyed being outdoors.

Also remember to stay hydrated as you are still perspiring and will need to replenish the lost fluid.

While Australia has been feeling the effects of climate change, this years La Niña has been particularly savage, with ferocious cyclone activity in northern Queensland and massive flooding across Brisbane, greater Melbourne and country Victoria.

The effects can be better appreciated when you look at a satellite image of one of the inner Melbourne parks where we train.

Edinburgh Gardens - Melbourne, January 2010

Edinburgh Gardens - Melbourne, January 2011

You can really see the difference in the health of its vegetation and lawns from January 2010 to January 2011. Usually you’d expect the parks to be a little dryer, with large sections of brown grass, however given the amount of rain we’ve had over the summer the lawns are looking lush and green.

In the five years that I’ve been running boot camps at Edinburgh garden in North Fitzroy I have never seen it so green over the summer period. In fact, two years ago the winter was so dry it created large areas of exposed soil.

A number of senior meteorologist have noted that Melbourne’s recent climatic conditions are more akin to tropical north eastern Australia with high levels of humidity and torrential downfalls. A storm front will dump heavy rainfall over a 20 to 60 minute period as opposed to the more spasmodic rainfall patterns of very short periods of light rain.

In maintaining its reputation for four seasons in one day, Melbourne’s rainfall patterns are keeping everyone guessing. It’ll be interesting to see whether long-range forecasts that indicate Australia will return to drought conditions for a 7 -10 year period are right. The global phenomenon with whether patterns seems to be longer droughts and more intense, longer periods of rainfall.

Very interesting at his mornings boot camp with the high winds, I instructed everyone to stay away from trees.

One fitmate in particular said “what is with all the safety precautions”, then 20 minutes later a loud crack and crunch sound was followed by a large branch falling to the ground.

Unfortunately many of Melbourne’s parks have suffered from our severe 10 year drought as a result of the “El Niño” weather patterns, trees have experienced stress related to the low levels of moisture in the soil.

When ever there are high/gale force winds Fitstyler either avoids any areas within close proximity to trees or cancel the session all together. Fortunately Edinbugh Gardens in Melbourne has many open areas set back from the many magnificent oak trees of this Victorian park.

This has led to a situation where many of our fine oak trees have been left in a vulnerable state and with our high winds these trees have not fully recovered from the years of drought.

Over the past six months we have however experienced above average rainfall and in some instances recorded the highest precipitation for that period.

Generally the arborists have been keeping track of the condition of the trees however the unpredictable nature of limbs falling precipitates the need to unfortunately avoid staying underneath the canopy of these magnificent living creatures.

This begs the question how these trees will fare with future droughts as their future will be directly prortionate to the money that the local councils invest in saving these trees from an uncertain future. Many of these trees go back to the turn-of-the-century when the seasons were more predictable and we had the usual rainfall over winter followed by the drier summers as opposed to having dry winters year after year.