Well over NSW south coast I have for a few years now.
In the 80's, 90's and 2000's it was not uncommon to have highs 1035+ even as high as 1040's.
These days a reading of 1020 a reasonable high.
In the day the standard of 1013+ was a high and under was a called a Low.
For a couple of seasons now I've seen 1010 or even lower center circled as a high.

Any ideas why we rarely get high high's anymore?

Border Controll and AFP are doing a better job at stopping the high come down

They're watering them down a bit to squeeze that extra bit of profit out of the consumer. You know, like the chocolate maker who reduced the size of the family block from 250g to 200g and didn't drop the price, and the beer maker who changed the size of the beer from 375mL to 330mL. Corporate greed.

U can still get high , but u need vodka and a lil fizzy

Thermal collapse and wobble of the Antartic high. Lows are further south. Highs that used to cross Aussie are further south and weaker.

Fuzzy memory of meteorology course taken many moons ago has high pressure cells as air moving downward and low pressure as air moving up. Actual number is arbitrary as to the designation of high or low.

The end is nigh!

The Russians did it.

Gotta be the bloody GST was introduced around 2000 and hence the 10% drop in the total high pressure reading

Select to expand quote

longwinded said..
Fuzzy memory of meteorology course taken many moons ago has high pressure cells as air moving downward and low pressure as air moving up. Actual number is arbitrary as to the designation of high or low.

Yes warm rises and cools as it climbs. It then moves southward and then descends as a High pressure system.
Because it's cooled air it's more dense therefore it weighs more thus giving a higher pressure reading.
Agreed the number is somewhat arbitrary. However in the day 1013+ was nearly always the reading which designated a high and below that a
Low as it was then seen to be the average of the Highs and Lows. Not so over the last few years.

Pugwash said "Highs that used to cross Aussie are further south and weaker".
Yes I agree in the 80's and 90's I'm sure that in summer High centers were once further North in the 30-35 degree latitudes in summer.
Now they mostly are centered in the late 30's or mid 40's.

Yup, down our way we also no longer get the frequency of tidy circular low and high combinations in Autumn and Winter anymore, meaning fewer offshore reliable weather patterns and just lots of side shore junk :(