Crikey it’s wet

[Jerry_Atrick]

Where we are, it is forecast to be 13 degrees, light rain and a moderate wind.. positively summerish!  I should not jest as it is very mild for this time of year. Normally, we can leave our drinks outside and they will stay nice and chilled.

 

OT; I saw the Perth bushfires on the news.. incredible to think they ripped through outer suburbs. Sure do hope you see some rain in the not too distant future.

[Jerry_Atrick]

9 hours ago, red750 said:

Our forecast in Melbourne for Christmas Day is 30mm, with 15mm for the Boxing Day test.

At first, my partner thought the wonderful Aussie weather was a marketing con job. The only previous time she had been to Australia was as a 5 or 6 year old, and back in December '97, she joined me for the second two-weeks of a four week holiday based  in Melbourne. It was cloudy and forecast to be that for virtually all of the two weeks. We deciuded to head north to Merimbula for a few days, and the weather there was the same. There was a band of cloud that settled from north of Sydney to Melbourne hugging the coast and it was not forecast to go anywhere It was bludday humid, to boot.

 

So I made an executive decision; we checked out of the motel the next day and headed west - over the great divide to, you guessed it, Tocumwal (also gave me an excude to go for a glide). It was lovely and sunny, and nice and dry.. or we thought. The locals were walking around all hot and flusterred fanning, complaining at how wet the 2 percent of humidity was 🙂

 

After a couple of days, back to the grey skies of Melbourne. We did other trips, but I had tickets to the first day of the boxing day test (we were retruning to the UK on the 27th) For the first time, I can remember, it was rained out on the first day.

 

The next time we came to Aus for a holiday, SE Qld and NE NSW was awash (I was going to drive from Mlebourne - where I still had the crappydore). We decided to drive to Lightning Ridge instead. That was a great road trip, to be honest.

 

We moved to Bendigo when we moved to Australia. The locals I knew there said we could drive a 4x4 through Lake Eppaloch it was so dry, and yes, Aus (or certainly Vic) was in a dreought. The first two weeks of my partner in Bendigo, the the lake was ready to burst its banks. And yes, the rain had started the day we arrived.

 

We thought about marketing her to the Aussie government to send her wherever rain was needed.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

We thought about marketing her to the Aussie government to send her wherever rain was needed.

What's her nickname? Jupiter Pluvius?

[willedoo]

This weather is doing some things I've never seen before. Sheet lightning high up in the sky is common here, but twice in a week during thunderstorms I've had a large high altitude aerial blast like a bomb shake the whole house. Also it's the first time I've felt the strong concussion wave inside the house. You could physically feel it.

 

There's another one on the radar just about to hit. It's not a large system but sounds scary. The electrical storm again is very high up, but it's been continuous high noise for at least 15 minutes without even a split second break in between. It sounds like a squadron of fighter jets continually circling above.

 

Well I'm off; time to stay away from anything electrical.

[Marty_d]

Good luck Willedoo!

[nomadpete]

Xmas eve we drove up the range from Esk to Hampton at about 8pm.

This is a winding road through forest, with height gain of around 2000'. A spirited run I used to do in 20 Min.

At the start there was constant lightning over a 180 degree arc seen at the foot of the hill. So I went for it (BTW, I'm driving mother-in-law's borrowed car).

SWMBO being ever my sceptic scrolled up BOM radar which  showed the storms were already at top of range. 'More speed!' I cry.

Halfway up it hit us. Slowed from 110 to 40, we then dodged fallen and falling branches, swirling drifts of leaves, etc. Stopped twice to drag stuff off the road, in the pouring rain. It all ended well as long as I don't mind hearing 'I told you so' once again from my trusty navigator.

 

Thus our Xmas ended more stressfully than planned. At least it wasn't a boring trip. But maybe somebody's dog was trying to tell me something?

[willedoo]

That's a bad drive through the forestry heading up toward Ravensbourne if you're driving into the afternoon sun. The sun gets a strobe effect through those trees straight in your eyes.

[onetrack]

Gee, the few times I've driven up the GD Range, it was bad enough in fine weather and good daylight.

 

You're dead lucky a falling tree didn't nail you, Pete.  There was woman at Helensvale killed by a falling tree and another bloke in Victoria was flattened by one as well. I hate driving in stormy weather with gusts and gales, it simply portends disaster to me.

 

Might be a flashback to the day my house burnt down, it was a shocker of a stormy day in early October, with vicious gusts and general weather nastiness.

 

It was one of those gusts that twisted up the powerlines along the road, and which then fed 90 volts into a neutral wire, leading to 330V going through the house and melting my bedside clock, which then set fire to the curtains.

[nomadpete]

Yes, storms like that make every tree a risk to life and limb. I hadn't thought about the possibility of your electrical disaster. But in the past we had a big storm hit us years ago - the wind displaced a nearby highset home off its stumps an landed it intact on the ground in the back yard. Our street had poles carrying low voltage (240) and high voltage on crosstrees a metre higher on the same poles. Our blackout was due to a sheet of cliplock wrapped around these crosstrees. It put 3.3kv down our 240v supply to the street! Luckily it tripped out before any fires started.

[nomadpete]

As for our drive up the range, just when we felt safely away from active big gumtrees, we came to a stop. A solitary tree had come down across the road, trapping occupants in a passing car. Emergency workers had just arrived so we were not required to put our limited first aid skills to work. Nevertheless it was a sobering thing.

 

[old man emu]

In my neck of the woods all there has been is strong wind. On Christmas afternoon we were getting 20 kt nor'westers gusting to 30 kts. Boxing Day afternoon it was still from the nor'west at 15 gusting to 25 kts, but then it started to back around WNW and made its way southwest and began to calm. I'd say the eye of the Low has passed over a couple of hours ago and now the barometer is rising. That's a sign of the return of hot weather. There's been no rain since at least the morning of Christmas Eve. According to the forecast charts, there won't be any rain here until Saturday morning.

[old man emu]

Midday 27/12/23 

 

Just got back in from an attempt to snare some yabbies in the dam and the creek. The creek is flowing underground  with only the occasional puddle. That suggests that any rain we got earlier has simply soaked in where it fell. The yabbies have even gone in search of damper pastures.

[willedoo]

The death toll here in S.E. Queensland stands at seven for the Christmas and Boxing Day storms. Three men died in a boat capsize, two women washed away in a storm drain, one lady killed by a falling tree on the Gold Coast, and a little autistic girl took off over the fence just before the storm hit and was found drowned later.

[facthunter]

Not good. Natures forces are formidable.   Nev

[nomadpete]

I think that Mother Nature is starting to give some 'mummy slaps' to the human tribes.

[facthunter]

A touch of reality to our Cosseted lives.  Nev

[spacesailor]

Today the ' heaven' s '  opened up over Parramatta. 

Such a lot of heavy rain . And nothing to catch a ' bucket ' of it handy .

Spacesailor

[old man emu]

10 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Such a lot of heavy rain . And nothing to catch a ' bucket ' of it handy .

Surely you could have grabbed one of the buckets it was coming down in?

 

On the flat lands beyond the Great Divide it was another day of scattered Cu and light winds. Pleasantly cool for this time of year, but how I miss the smell of the first rains on dry earth.

[nomadpete]

10 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Today the ' heaven' s '  opened up over Parramatta. 

Such a lot of heavy rain .

Spacesailor

Well Spacey, last time I passed through Parramatatta it did look like it needed a good clean out.

[old man emu]

But Parramatta is the great multicultural focus of the duopolis. 

[nomadpete]

I rest my case

[old man emu]

I watched a rather in-depth weather forecast this evening. Much was made of rain systems moving down the east coast from Cape York to the NSW Northern Rivers and another system moving across Victoria and swinging northeast towards Sydney. Rainfall is predicted to be heavy in both systems. However, the depictions of the main areas to receive this rain were conspicuously absent from my neck of the woods.

 

All I have been getting is consistent strong winds. These winds seem so strong that they could blow over a chain-link fence.

[facthunter]

Something depicting the MSL Isobars  will help a bit with predicting that. The usual time for strong winds there is August, but there have been LOWS fairly north  over land which is not usual for summer..  They should be way down south. Nev

[old man emu]

From this MSL chart, you wouldn't expect winds of 15 kts, gusting to mid-20s from the northeast over Central West NSW.

 

 

Those inland Lows are stirring things up.

[onetrack]

Anytime you get a trough line or a low pressure system, the air is going to flow to it at a sizeable rate of knots, and you really notice the wind inland, where the terrain is flat to undulating.