Crikey it’s wet

[spacesailor]

Told you .

Hot.

Just posted, England 1963 January.  ( first born ) .

Cold.

spacesailor

 

[Marty_d]

Sorry guys, you can have that.  I start overheating if it gets above 25.

 

Despite being cooler than you big island states, we've been getting a bit of fire activity down our way - on Saturday I saw a couple of AT-802 Air Tractors doing low turns over Bonnet Hill, close to Kingston, and a couple of choppers too.  Found out later there were 6 aircraft doing water bombing on a bushfire.

Then today the same Air Tractors went overhead and we could hear them operating in the area.  FlightRadar24 showed them doing tight orbits over Pelverata for quite some time.  Again there was at least 1 chopper attending (Bell 214, very distinctive sound).

Good that they're jumping on them so quick.

[nomadpete]

Our new policy is to hit every fire with everything we can, as fast as we can. It doesn't always work but it's better than waiting for the situation to get out of hand, THEN calling out the big guns.

[onetrack]

Strangely enough, despite the ferocious heat, we've had little by way of fires. I put that down to the fact it's too hot even for the firebugs/arsonists to get out and about.  

[nomadpete]

And no dry lightning.

[old man emu]

I think we should ask Ian to have our location displayed on the left there, near our avatar. It would make understanding this thread easier if we knew roughly where people were. East Coast/West Coast/Tassie are a bit vague descriptions.

[facthunter]

The heaviest precipitation rates would be from tropical maritime air. Perth gets hot when the winds there have travelled over great distances of hot dry land to get there,  Nev

[onetrack]

I find this current extreme heatwave to be very puzzling. Normally with any heatwave we get, it doesn't take long for a big thunderstorm to build up, and we get fireworks and some rain.

But there's been an extensive cloud mass moving in over Southern W.A. over the last couple of days, from the central Indian Ocean - and to us on the ground, the sky is overcast, it looks like a massive thunderstorm is brewing up - but we haven't had a single drop of rain anywhere in Southern W.A.

 

I would have thought the cloud mass moving in from the Indian Ocean would've brought some worthwhile moisture with it - but it hasn't, and this has me truly puzzled.

[facthunter]

Somehow or other you just aren't getting enough moisture. Access MSL Isobars over e period. I follow the eastern patterns mostly and  to the north. . Nev

[spacesailor]

Just tie a " post code " to your " avatar. 

I could be wrong but each state is a different initial number , to the other states .

spacesailor 

[facthunter]

O/T I can't see anything for you in the next 4 days. Nev

[onetrack]

NOAA is saying we might get a bit of moisture within the next 7 days, but I can't see anything by way of moisture for the next 3 weeks. The cold fronts aren't reaching us, and no moisture is coming down from the NW in upper level cloud masses. 

 

The magpies and a heap of other birds were in the front yard this morning with their wings drooping and beaks open. Poor buggers are doing it tough, it's like an oven out there.

We've got birdbaths back and front and keep them full and the birds are using them aplenty. There's a lot of street trees ready to die, they're nearly all Qld Box, and they can't stand extended dry spells.

 

The last rain we had was 6mm on the 3rd Oct 2023, and even September rainfall was well below average. I cannot ever remember a Spring and Summer so hot and so dry, for so long.

 

https://www.farmonlineweather.com.au/models/rainfallchart.jsp?lt=wzcountry&lc=aus&mh=168

[facthunter]

I would just HATE that. Tinder dry and like an oven. It was like that when I started in the Perth-Sydney veteran car and bike run. If there was no shade, you'd only last a few hours at best.  Nev

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, facthunter said:

O/T I can't see anything for you in the next 4 days. Nev

Unless you cross my palm with silver.

[spacesailor]

Where is this ' wonderful ' warn dry land , that I thought Australia was .

spacesailor

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

Where is this ' wonderful ' warn dry land , that I thought Australia was .

spacesailor

I think we are famous for our "wide brown land".

 

If it isn't brown with dead grass and dust, it's brown with floodwater.

[onetrack]

We've been going to the beach in the early mornings to get away from the constant heat. We leave about 5:30AM, and get there about 6:15AM, it's 20kms, and we have to almost go into the city and out the other side. But thanks to the Farmer Freeway Tunnel, we get a good run through, without too many lights or holdups - and going early beats the morning peak hour traffic rush.

 

Here's 3 shots of City Beach as we arrived at 6:15AM this morning, the Indian Ocean was like a millpond, and there was just a slight breeze, about 7kmh from the North. It was 30°C at 6:15AM at the beach, and there were only a relatively small amount of people on the beach and oceanfront.

Yesterday was busier, but I think yesterday might have been an RDO for a lot of people. It was much windier yesterday also, with a 25-30kmh hot Easterly blowing.

 

We usually leave after about an hour, so we only just start to run into peak hour traffic on the way home - but fortunately, we're running against it, after we go through the Tunnel.

 

 

 

[old man emu]

I can't remember a summer with such a constant flow of thunderstorms hitting Sydney, especially the CBD and Inner West. It's normal for storms to run up the coast (Southerly Busters) and to come in from the southwest to go from Penrith to Palm Beach.

 

Yesterday there was a monstrous Cumulus formation to the east of Gilgandra. It was like a white mountain range in the sky. Truly awe inspiring. It started to move towards my place and the wind was gale force.We got a warning call from my niece who lives in Gilgandra warning us that the storm was a hail storm. I watched it moving towards my place while I was putting some protective coverings over my car (no garage or shed for it). The storm cell finally arrived abeam my place. I think I got a half dozen drops of rain. So today I've got the sprinklers going to keep my lawn alive.

[facthunter]

Isolated large cell over here right now with BIG heavy raindrops and thunder. No need to water anything tonight. Been pretty lucky this summer. I'm in a bad bushfire area.   Nev

[nomadpete]

Wet? WTF is wet?

 

Last night our firies went for a drive through some nearby forestry that was burnt out back in '19. We saw that thousands of acres have been replanted and now are dense young blue gum forest. The ground fuel load is higher than it was back in '19. it is so dry that most dams are dry. The ground is dry, subsoil moisture  is lacking, relative humidity is low.  All is a tinderbox. We are just hoping  that there are no sparks until the rainy season starts. But that is still months away.

[nomadpete]

At last we now have some rain forecast. Would you believe 0.02mm and 0.01mm is expected next week? I can probably sweat more than that!

[onetrack]

Interestingly, I note that Christmas Island (an Australian Territory administered by W.A.) has had only half its annual rainfall in the last 12 months, and only 25% of its normal wet season rainfall.

 

This is the ninth-driest year in the Islands weather records, which only go back 50 years. There have been some bad droughts on Christmas Island before, one of which actually caused the cessation of the phosphate mining there. This year, the drought has affected the red crab migration, and delayed it by 3 to 4 months.

 

The crabs normally migrate from the interior to the Indian Ocean to breed in October and November, but they've only just started their migration, and there's concerns this late migration may result in a higher level of crab mortalities.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-20/dry-weather-delays-christmas-island-crab-migration/103487576

[red750]

It has been about 32C today, but at about 6:30 there was a hell of a bang, and it started raining. My son got home from work about half an hour ago (7:40) and said he was at the corner of Whitehorse and Springvale Rds in Nunawading, when a bolt of lightning hit the ground, and initial raindops on his car bonnet were larger than a 50c coin. I took these photos out of my front door at 8:00 PM.

 

 

The patio is under a metal roof, and the rain only lasted about 20 minutes.

[old man emu]

The way the weather has been around here for weeks, I'm looking at the dark clouds building up and realising that I can leave the washing on the line.

[onetrack]

We are going to get SOME RAIN!!! Hooray!!! From cyclone Lincoln that started off in the Gulf of Carpentaria, which dropped heaps of rain as it went right through Arnhem Land, through NW Qld, through the middle of the N.T., and then into the W.A. Kimberley region, as a low pressure system.

 

It's gone out into the Northern Indian Ocean off the Kimberley coast, and is going to come South, curving around to the SSE and crossing the coast somewhere between Cape Cuvier and Carnarvon.

It's forecast to bring rain to the parched Gascoyne and all of the S.W. of W.A. Thank goodness, it's been that long since it rained, I'll get a fright when water falls out of the sky again!!

 

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60281.shtml

 

http://satview.bom.gov.au/

 

Edited February 23 by onetrack