The wild ride that was January in Ballarat, and there's more to come

HOW do you sit back and review a weather month quite like the one we've just had across Ballarat?

Scorching temperatures, violent storms, wind, dust and even a few decent days have cobbled together to create one of the more inconsistent months you are ever likely to see in this part of the world.

While much of the state battled crippling bushfires, Ballarat barely had time to dry out with just a few days going by without some form of rain, or another storm rolling through.

And the rain that came was generally heavy, even leading to some unseasonable green shoots sprouting on lawns throughout the month.

Inconsistent was clearly the buzz word across the whole of the state for the unusual January, which is traditionally one of the more reliable months of the year.

On one night - January 20 - Ballarat's rain gauge, based out at the airport, recorded 20mm. The city itself saw zero and Lake Burrumbeet barely 15km up the roads saw more than 200mm, that in itself shows how hard the weather was the predict throughout the month.

Officially Ballarat recorded 70mm of rain, almost double the usual 39.6mm, but again, if you live in inner city, you probably saw just about on average.

Temperature wise, despite seeing days where the mercury couldn't climb above 14 and other where we reached nearly 40 degrees, overall, the temperature was just on average, slightly warmer than the usual 25.5 degrees, ending the month at 25.8 degrees.

The 14.1 degree day on January 5 was only one degree warmer than the coldest ever day recorded in January, which came on January 2, 1970 where the mercury hit just 13.1 degrees.

Friday January 31 proved to be the hottest day tipping close to 40 degrees but that, after a similarly warm day on January 30 will come to a quick end with the cold front seeing temperatures drop down to 15 by Monday.

Throughout the month, we saw five significant cold fronts come across from the west seeing temperatures drop by more than 20 degrees twice and another change is expected this weekend rain falls from the north.

The inconsistency finally petered out late in the month where we saw seven consecutive days where no rain fell and the temperature gradually climbed as normal for this time of year.