Hot and sticky: Orange was drenched by one of our wettest Februarys on record

The numbers behind Orange's latest summer are in and it can be revealed the region was drenched by almost double the average amount of rain during the hottest part of the year and, on average, the months of December, January and February were all hotter than normal for our region.

The average temperature in Orange across summer is 25.5 degrees.

Over the summer, our average temperature was 26.7 degrees - more than a full degree warmer than average.

While rainfall-wise the city was completely drenched.

Orange's main weather station at Spring Hill recorded 84.6mm of rain in December then 73.6mm in January before recording the city's wettest February in 22 years.

Orange recorded 189.4mm of rain to end summer - our most rainfall in February since 2002, when 208.8mm was recorded at the airport.

In fact, February 2024 will go down as one of Orange's wettest on record. Historical data obtained by the Central Western Daily points to February 1973 being the city's wettest on record with 307mm record.

The only other time Orange hit 200-plus-mm was in 2002, and then the 189.4mm we recorded this year sits in third on the podium.

The trend of a hot and wet summer matches that experienced by the bulk of Australia.

Weaterzone.com says Australia has sweated through its third-hottest summer on record.

Mean temperatures (the combination of both maximums and minimums) averaged across Australia in the 2023-34 summer were 1.62 degrees above the 30-year average from 1991-2020.

The warm summer was relatively uniform across the country, weatherzone.com data points to, with all states and territories experiencing above-average mean temperatures in the 2023/24 summer. Western Australia was a stand-out, enduring by far its hottest summer on record.