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Posted

Darwin has perhaps the most steady of daily Max temps. Where the prevailing winds come from is what determines weather.  Melbourne's temps vary vastly. Tasmania slightly more so.. North America has changeable weather.  Nev

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Posted

Kununurra can get really hot at times as they are close enough to the coast to get the humidity but also can get inland type high temperatures with it. I was there once when it was 50° which is nothing out of the ordinary for inland dry heat, but the humidity combined with it was a killer. I spent a month further south of there near Yagga Yagga (south of Balgo) on the edge of the Great Sandy and it was around 55° every day for that month, but I'd rather have that high dry heat than what was at Kununurra. 

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Posted

At least with the cold, if you have enough of the right clothing and gear you can survive. But with heat, as Nev says, if you don't have some way of staying cool you die. In the cold you can add on enough gear to survive with your own body heat trapped in the clothing but with heat you can take everything off and still die. The other problem with heat is as the heat stress increases you start losing judgement as I've experienced a couple of times. They tell stranded people not to leave their vehicles but it takes a lot of discipline to adhere to that when they are in that mental state of confusion.

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Posted

Never had ' too much heat ' sunburnt back included .

When it hits the high 40s . I stop under a tree .

When it's cold my toes blead .( Chilblains ( the precurser of frost bite )).

Then I stop walking & go to sleep . ( check wiki underweight kids )

spacesailor

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Posted

I can generally always find a cool spot when it's stinking hot, but when I'm cold, I get chilled to the bone, and can't get warm, no matter what.

 

I've worked in Marble Bar, worked North, East and South of Kalgoorlie, and seen plenty of 50° days, with no wind. You need to drink plenty of water, and wet yourself down regularly.

It's when you get a stinking hot Nth-Easterly wind out of the Centre in mid-Summer, that you learn all about HOT! I've seen 47° in Perth, and that feels hotter than 50° in the Outback.

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Posted

I'm the opposite. Winter and the cold is my favourite time. Always happiest when I have to wear long johns, a coat and a beanie (plus other stuff), not keen on shorts and T shirt weather. The only cold I don't like is when you have to wear gloves as it's a bit restrictive on what you can do. Unfortunately for a cold lover I live in a relatively hot area.

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Posted

In 1985 I found myself in Calgary and I was intending to head up north and get a job for the winter. I got talking to a Canadian surveyor who was on a break in Calgary and he filled me in on a lot of detail about working in the cold. he showed me a permanently numb patch on his finger where a glove developed a pinhole and his finger got damaged before he picked up on it. He said the biggest danger is breaking through the ice, and that he'd only seen it once. They carry spare gear, towels and blankets etc. behind the seats of the Toyotas for such emergencies so they were able to strip off his wet clothes, rug him up and get him in the heated vehicle before he froze to death.

 

I'd previously talked to a Canadian when I was working in WA and he related stories of escape hatches in the top of machine cabs and how dozer crews used to walk manless dozers over sections of dodgy ice by using long wire cables attached to the steering clutch handles and other controls. I left Calgary and made it to Peace River where a lot of contractors were based and intended to scout for a job the following day. That night the temperature dropped much colder than -30 and the river froze rock solid on top. I realised that to work in that sort of cold you need to be in country a bit earlier to allow time for a bit of cold weather education. I thought that with my inexperience I was likely to go up there and lose fingers and toes so I pulled the pin on the idea. Another deciding factor was that the money was no better than in Australia working in the heat, so I came home and went back to the desert I knew and kept all my digits.

 

The day after I left Peace River the bus stopped at Grand Prairie a bit further south and the temperature dropped to -40 around lunchtime when I was there. A ten minute walk in inadequate boots took twenty minutes of thawing in a heated shopping centre before I could walk on. You need proper snow boots in those temperatures. Minus 20 at Calgary was quite pleasant if the wind wasn't blowing.

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Posted
14 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

Imagine those poverty stricken pome kids with' folded brown paper ' in their shoes to seal the holes. 

No wool on their backs . ( calico  ? ).

spacesailor

 

spacey, I remember a very cold winter in 1984 when I was working in the Flinders Range area. We had sleet and the wind chill factor was bad. None of us had the gear for that so we raided the rag bag and stuffed our clothes full of rags plus a rag around the face like a bushranger. One time on a motorbike, we pulled up and got some newspapers to stuff down the front of our coats. It worked ok.

Posted

That one in 1984 was one of those things that sweep up from Antarctica and travel a fair way north. It snowed in Toowoomba that time, common around Stanthorpe district but fairly rare around Toowoomba.

Posted

The coldest day I can ever recall, I was working at Mt Beaumont, about 90kms E of Esperance. It was July 1984 and I was operating an open cab dozer, digging a new farm dam, and a potent Southerly wind was blowing straight off the Antarctic ice.

Esperance had a maximum of 8° that day, and I swear it was -18° where I was - on a Southerly-sloping, bare patch of cleared farmland, where the wind could pick up speed. I was wearing jeans, shirt, heavy woollen jumper, overalls, and big gloves and I can still feel that cold to this day!!

 

I can also recall a friend telling me about visiting Chicago in mid-Winter, and when he went outside it was -14°F. He said you had to be careful about taking big deep breaths, or you could develop ice particles in your lungs. They can shove that climate, I don't understand how anyone can live in it.

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Posted

Chicago is one of the coldest places i have been as well. I was changing planes there and there was a blizzard outside. Temperature was minus twenty something fahrenheit & windchill well below -30 or about -35 deg celcius. There were  3 doors to get to the outside (2 airlocks). When I breathed in my nasal hairs froze & I felt like I couldn't breathe at all. You could throw a boiling hot cup of coffee in to the air and it would freeze instantly and fall to the ground as ice crystals. This was back in the late 80s.

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Posted
3 hours ago, onetrack said:

The coldest day I can ever recall, I was working at Mt Beaumont, about 90kms E of Esperance. It was July 1984 and I was operating an open cab dozer, digging a new farm dam, and a potent Southerly wind was blowing straight off the Antarctic ice.

Esperance had a maximum of 8° that day, and I swear it was -18° where I was - on a Southerly-sloping, bare patch of cleared farmland, where the wind could pick up speed. I was wearing jeans, shirt, heavy woollen jumper, overalls, and big gloves and I can still feel that cold to this day!!

That would be the same one I mentioned in 1984 when I was near the Flinders Ranges. Also on an open cab dozer and the wind was freezing. Even with the clothes stuffed full of rags including one tied around the face, it was bitterly cold. In that same cold wind blast, my dad up in Queensland had a couple of inches of snow over the lawn. He was born there and only saw snow that one time in his 89 years.

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Posted

I had a full beard when I was in Alberta and the worst part of those sub zero temperatures was that as fast as ice forms on your mustache, the hot breath is melting it and it's like having a permanently runny nose. Clean shaven blokes don't have as much of an issue with that.

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Posted

Crikey its wet!

For a day we had a taste of almost summer. It was 25 degrees yesterday. Then misty drizzle set in. Today its 10 degrees and Tassie has flood warnings for the top half of the state.

 

And it looks like even you mainland mob can have some rain too. We share!

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Posted

Yet another day when the promised thunderstorms, or even scattered showers, manage to avoid my place. The BOM claimed that there would be rainfall over most of today and into the weekend. 

 

image.thumb.jpeg.0633483653007ef530462f99e3ffd564.jpeg

All I can see is thin cloud and the humidity up to 25%, which is about twice the usual level for this time of year. The radar shows rain forming downwind, but nothing on the approach.

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Posted
9 hours ago, onetrack said:

The warm Winter in W.A. has ruined our cherry harvest, we didn't get enough frost to set the fruit. I'm hoping the Tasmanian cherries make up the shortfall, we often get beaut Tassie cherries.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-25/wa-cherries-in-low-supply/104634666

 

 

A colleague in Adelaide was boasting of his cherry haul from a tree in his back yard.

Subsequently he was late to a meeting due to overindulgence-related diarrhea.

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