temperatures, rain
Australia is a huge continent, and it has extremes of temperature. Like 45º C or -5º C.
In summer, many inland areas have temperatures in the high 30ºs and in some areas mid 40º Cs. Alice Springs’ average January maximum temperature is 36.4º C.
In winter, the temperature can plunge. Alice’s average July minimum temperature is 4º C. When you are camping out in your tent, that makes for a cold start.
If you are on the Gibb River Road in November, you can reach a maximum temperature of 38° C or higher every day. That’s pretty unpleasant to bike in, especially with the high humidity.
Each of the 550+ weather stations across Australia records key data: temperature, rainfall and windspeed. This can be handy to consult to avoid the sometimes hellish conditions that can prevail.
Check out the data at the Bureau of Meteorology website to get a sense of what the temperatures are likely to be where you are heading.
During the Wet Season in the tropics, from November to April, the rain buckets down. Darwin gets 1500 — 1700 mm average in those wettest 6 months, 200 mm for the rest of the year.
Outside the tropics, rain might be less of an issue. You can go for months in Central Australia with only a few occasional drops. Then again, it’s possible to be unlucky; it’s rain after all.
Looks like the 10 years of drought in the eastern states of Australia has broken, and rain has started to fall again. A lot of rain.
When clay-based roads and rain combine, you, of course, get mud. Mucky, sticky mud that clogs the tyres and makes travel not a whole bunch of fun.
Here’s something else to think about. There can be flash floods in Central Australia when rainfall occurs 20 or 30 km away, and the creeks can go from completely dry to raging within minutes, even though no rain fell in the immediate vicinity.
Moral of that story: don’t camp in dry creek beds if there’s any possibility of rain on the horizon.