Orange weather in 2022: 12 months of rain and cool temperatures as long standing records break

The last 12 months have been one of our coolest and wettest in our history.

For the first time in almost 50 years and just the second time in recorded history Orange's maximum temperature failed to break through the 30 degrees Celsius ceiling.

Our top recorded maximum for last year was 29.8 degrees, recorded on Boxing Day.

Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino said it was the first time Orange hasn't hit 30 degrees in a calendar year since 1974.

"This is indeed rare," he said.

It's only the second time Orange has failed to hit 30 degrees in recorded history, which dates back to 1957.

In fact, it took Orange 360 days of 2022 just to reach 29 degrees Celsius, which was that Boxing Day high water mark. The city then recorded 29 degrees Celsius on December 28, but that was the only other time all year we reached that mark too.

And while December proved our warmest month of 2022, it was also our driest.

Just 33.4 millimetres was recorded at the Orange Airport to wrap up the last calendar year, with almost half of that total falling to 9am on December 13 when 16mm was recorded.

That figure juxtaposes the November total of 236mm, which marks our soggiest month of 2022.

As a result, Suma Park Dam's level has dipped just below 100 per cent, where it has sat since about May, 2022.

Suma Park Dam is at 99.76 per cent capacity, as of December 23 reading. As a whole, Orange's water storages - which includes Suma, Spring Creek Dam, Lake Canobolas and Gosling Creek Dam - are sitting at a combined level of 99.70 per cent.

That healthy total can be attributed to one of the wettest years in Orange's recorded history, too.

In 2022, Orange's main weather station at the airport recorded 1340mm of rain to rank as our sixth wettest 12 month period in over 130 years of records.

The 1666mm recorded in 1950 remains the city's wettest 12-month period in history, with 2010 (1580.4mm) and 1956 (1518mm) rounding out the top three.

The 2021 calendar year is Orange's fourth wettest with 1455.8mm with 1973's total of 1442 in fifth. Last year's total of 1340mm is next, and marks just the eighth time since 1890 the city's annual rainfall total has passed the 1300mm mark.

That means the 2795.8mm Orange has recorded in back-to-back calendar years marks the city's wettest 24-hour period in history. That figure passes the 2719mm from 1955-56.

To put that in perspective, throughout the height of the drought in 2018 and 2019, that two-year period in Orange recorded 1069.2mm of rain.

Things should level out to some form of normality to kick start the new year, the Bureau of Meteorology's climate outlooks for the beginning of 2023 suggest.

For January, most of the country has close to equal chance of above or below median rainfall.

The forecast says most of the country has close-to-equal chance of above or below median rainfall for the period January to March.

Above median rainfall is likely (around 60 per cent chance) for eastern parts of the eastern states, especially eastern parts of New South Wales.

The Bureau says past accuracy of January to March long-range forecasts for chance of above median rainfall has "generally been moderate to high".

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