What is Darwin's Weather Web?
As we all know Darwin’s rainfall is often unpredictable. Isolated storms can hit one suburb, dropping buckets of water in a few minutes but the next suburb can still be bone dry. This can makes daily rainfall levels reported on the nightly news quite misleading, as your suburb may have not had any rain but the news is saying that 'Darwin' has had 30 mm. This makes it hard to figure out how much you should be watering, or not watering, your garden.
To help, Living Water Smart has created the Weather Web.
It's a network of over thirty weather stations on school rooftops scattered around the Darwin region. The Weather Web provides current suburb by suburb weather data that can be accessed by anyone in the community and used to make smart decisions about efficient watering in the garden.
Generally, gardens need about 30 mm of water a week. All you need to do is search for your suburb in the Weather Web to find out how much water your garden is getting and then adjust your irrigation accordingly.
Tapping into the weather data provides advantages to both your wallet and your garden. Your garden won’t be over-watered, and you’ll save money knowing your garden has just the right amount of water it needs to be healthy. Gardens that are watered the right amount grow well as they have nice deep root systems better able to access water and nutrients in the soil.
There are two main ways to use the Weather Web in the garden:
- Low Tech – Use the weather data to decide when to manually adjust you irrigation according to how much rain your suburb has received. Find out how much water your garden needs here.
- Hi Tech - Your watering schedule will be automatically adjusted via a smart irrigation controller according to localised weather conditions.
In the Darwin region the garden is where we use most of our water and most people over-water their garden. Your garden can be just as healthy, sometimes healthier, with reduced watering.
To find out more about the Weather Web see our Frequently Asked Questions.