JUST 10 days into March and Summer seems well and truly in the rear view, as wet and windy colder weather rolled into the South West this week.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), just over 20mm of rain has been recorded at Portland Airport to Thursday morning, approaching halfway to the monthly average of 46mm.

South west Victoria stood out compared to the rest of the state with higher that average summer rainfall across the board, except at Cape Nelson, which saw only 84% of its summer average.

Otherwise, average maximum temperatures dropped (20.9 at Cape Nelson Lighthouse, 21.8 at Portland Airport and 24.9 in Dartmoor), but by less than 1%.

After a completely rain-free February 2022 and an overall worryingly dry previous summer, Dartmoor had a reprieve this year with 124.6mm of rain recorded, this time half of which fell in February.

According to the bureau’s long range forecast, similar weather is expected to continue through March, before drying up fro an overall below average Autumn in terms of rainfall with above average temperatures.

The La Nina weather system, the most recent BOM report reads, is likely to end soon.

“All but one of the surveyed international climate models suggest sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific (including NINO3.4) will remain neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña) through autumn; one model is neutral in March and April but touches on El Niño thresholds in May,” the report reads.

Bakers Delight in Portland received a rude welcome to Autumn, with heavy winds early Tuesday morning bringing down the verandah at the Percy Street shop.

Owner Mark Conheady said he arrived at around 4am ready to bake the day’s bread, to find the structure caved over the main entrance to the shop.

“I rang the SES and (local contractor) the Carr’s, they came and did a really good job of getting it down and making it all safe,” Mr Conheady said.

“We closed for the day, just to look after everyone with it down, safety first.”

There were no obvious signs that the support struts holding the verandah up were ready to give, according to Mr Conheady, who said they gave way from one side, bringing the pedestrian cover down slowly.

Contractors took it away in pieces as it was pulled down on Tuesday morning, and the bakery was able to re-open the following day, sans-verandah.

Mr Conheady said it would be replaced once a new one is made, while there was no damage to the shop itself.

Wind  blew at a peak of 80km/h from the west-north-west that morning, the strongest recorded for the year so far and aside from some trees down that caused little interference, Portland SES Unit Commander Scott McFarlane said it was a surprisingly quiet morning, given the conditions.

“I hate to say the word because it always ends up being that we have a really busy day around the corner, but we were lucky, it was pretty quiet but I’m sure the council guys were busy clearing up trees and branches,” Mr McFarlane said.