Weather and the Macedon mountains - building community knowledge

This project aims to begin gathering and understanding detailed weather data about our local area. 

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We are living in a changing climate and the monolith of the Macedon range has a profound impact on the weather of these areas, increasing or decreasing the intensity of storms, gales, fire and floods. In particular, rainfall and wind are shaped and shifted by the Mountains.

Yet the closest government weather station is at Kilmore Gap, over 36 km east of Macedon. There is no accessible, analyzed or explained data about the Macedon range on a macro level, let alone a micro level.

In 2024 our landcare group ran an event called ‘Wind, Rain Cloud and Sun’ where a climate scientist, Dr Linden Ashcroft gave a presentation on understanding the climate of the Mount Macedon region in a state and global context. More than 160 people registered to attend and Jubilee Hall was packed.

While Dr Ashcroft was a compelling speaker, she was unable to provide as much detailed information about the weather and climate of our specific area as we wanted. This gap was a common theme in the feedback we received after the event, summed up by this comment:

"I would like to hear presentations on the dynamics generating local weather patterns.Why are some valleys wetter, drier, or windier than adjacent ones? Why is the average wind direction quite different in different localities around a mountain or highland? What generates the fierce local gusts that at times rip matured trees out of the ground? Some 3D modelling of air mass movements due to local topography would be excellent."

This is the need we want to address in this project, so that the communities proximate to the mountain range are educated, better able to understand the local weather patterns, can make better decisions, are more connected to indigenous weather knowledge, and appreciate the impact on the natural environment.

To this end we have been successful in obtaining a grant from the Macedon Ranges Council to commission the services of a climate scientist to gather and collate, map and graph, story and tell us, the whys and wherefores of the local climate and weather that community is so hungry to understand.  We have engaged Mr Neil Plummer, a former Bureau of Meteorology General Manager Community Forecasts.

In order to obtain the very local weather knowledge that is at the heart of this project, we intend to seek citizen science weather data from residents, focusing on two extreme weather events - rain and fire weather, and asking for related data, namely rainfall and wind. Mr Plummer will analyse and map this data to give us a detailed picture of weather variations in and around the mountain. 

This project will run in 2025. If you want any further information or to be involved, email Kate Lawrence kate@storyground.com.au