Winemaker at Clonakilla Winery, Murrumbateman, Tim Kirk. Photo: Graham Tidy
Canberra’s coldest October morning on record looks to have devastated low-lying vineyards around the region, with crop losses estimated at 50 per cent and above.
The temperature at Canberra Airport fell to minus 3.4 degrees about 6am, eclipsing the previous October record of minus 3.3 degrees which was set in 1957. The cold was felt around the region, with weather stations at Braidwood and Goulburn both registering minus 5 degree temperatures about dawn.
Meteorologist Ben McBurney from Fairfax-owned Weatherzone said the freezing start in the Canberra region was in complete contrast to the fiery conditions experienced just 200 kilometres to the north.
“It’s an amazing contrast - such conflicting air masses ahead of the trough. Before we had a very, very hot air mass, a dry air mass, and that dry air stuck around as well, and the cold front behind that was full of very cold air,” he said.
Mr McBurney said the combination of extremely dry air, clear skies, and low winds meant extremely cold air was able to settle over a large part of the region. Combined with the coldest part of the air mass arriving right at dawn, temperatures plummeted.
Clonakilla winemaker Tim Kirk, based out at Murrumbatemen, said his vintage has suffered “significant damage” – he estimated a loss of about 50 per cent or more of the grape crop, but said it would take about a month before the full extent of the damage was known.
“It’s hard to give a really accurate depiction of how bad it is yet, because we won’t really know – everything depends on the flower buds,” he said. “We were looking forward to another great Canberra vintage.”
The low-lying vineyards and vines were hit hardest, but Mr Kirk said while yield would be severely reduced, there was no reason the quality of the vintage would have been hurt by the frost.
“The higher blocks are ok … but the ones closer to the bottom of the hill have been almost completely wiped out. They’ll grow back, but they won’t have anywhere near enough crop on them the second time,” he said.
“In the Canberra district, so much hinges on where you plant your vineyard. And really it’s so clear now that you want to plant towards the top of the hill, not the bottom.”
Mr Kirk, who was recently named Gourmet Traveller Australian Winemaker of the Year, said the frost brought him “down to earth with a thump” but ultimately it was just a “temporary setback”.
“That’s farming. In the context of other news today, we’ve got hundreds of people in NSW who have lost their homes, that does put it into perspective,” he said.
The yo-yoing between extreme heat and extreme cold was normal in spring, but Mr McBurney said the rapid changes in weather conditions this year have been particularly pronounced due to an unusually high frequency of cold fronts in October.
“Spring is a turbulent time of year. You get conflicting air mass still, you get those cold fronts coming from the south and the heat building inland. But this year we’ve had especially hot temperatures inland over the interior,” he said.
“That has meant that you get these sharp contrasts over short amounts of time. So you get these cold fronts coming through, ahead of the front you get the really intense heat.
"Behind the front you get the cold day, then as soon as the next trough comes in from the west it drags in the heat from the interior again. This year it’s more marked than normal.”
Mr McBurney said the heat would start building again in Canberra over the weekend, and could persist into next week as the next cold front looked to have slowed down.
But modelling for summer showed a likely increase in rain towards the end of spring, before relatively average conditions over summer in terms of both rainfall and temperature.
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