Metropolitan weekly water update - as at 3 May 2018

Note: 1 billion litres = approx. 400 Olympic swimming pools

Water use

Average daily water use over the last week was 795 million litres, which was above the forecast of 770 million litres.  Since 1 July 2017 we have used 245 billion litres of water, which is 9.28 billion litres below the 254.3 billion litres we had forecast.

Dam levels

Over the last seven days, Perth’s dam storage levels have slightly fallen from 138.8 billion litres to 137 billion litres of usable storage. Perth’s dams store water from three different sources… groundwater and desalinated seawater transferred from treatment plants as well as streamflow (produced by rainfall).

Sprinkler roster compliance

The two-day-per week sprinkler roster now applies, and our inspectors issued 76 warnings and 75 fines last week.  Since 1 January 2018 we have taken a total of 3,612 actions (warnings + fines) compared with 4,091 actions for the same period in 2017.

Rainfall

As you can see from this photo, Perth received a welcomed shower yesterday morning, which produced 2.6mm of rainfall at the Perth metropolitan weather station. The average rainfall in Perth for May is 116.9mm.

Since 1 January 2018 we have received 132.2mm of rainfall – cumulative average rainfall from January to May is 202.8mm.

April 2018: a dyer and warmer than average month for Perth

The Bureau of Meteorology has released its climate summary for April, with Perth experiencing a dryer and warmer than average month.

• Total rainfall for the Perth metro was 20.6 mm, which is 58 per cent of the long-term average of 35.7 mm, but wetter than April 2017 when no rainfall was recorded

• The wettest day for most locations was in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday, 22 April with daily totals reaching the 10 mm to 20 mm range

• The mean daily maximum temperature for Perth metro was 26.1 °C, which is 0.2 °C above the long-term average of 25.9 °C.

• The warmest day was 33.1 °C on Monday, 16 April, and the coolest day was on the Thursday, 19 April when the temperature reached 21.3 °C