Crikey it’s wet

[pmccarthy]

It’s Molly Meldrum!

[onetrack]

Thanks to a dire shortage of labour and a corresponding substantial shortage of accommodation, materials, and everything else required to start on a major Fitzroy River bridge replacement, there's been a proposal raised, to ask the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to assist in replacing the bridge.

 

The thoughts behind this proposal are that because the Americans are using Northern Australia as a fairly regular training base for their military forces - and they regularly organise joint military exercises with Aussie troops - then it's not unreasonable to ask them to contribute a bit to rebuilding the infrastructure that they use, as well.

 

In addition, the USACE are experts at bridge engineering and major earthworks, and flood control (they're in charge of the Mississippi flood control works), then the proposal is that the skills and experience that they have to offer - as well as the amount of labour they have available - will go down well, in helping to repair all this major infrastructure damage in the North.

 

https://thewest.com.au/stories/govt-wants-to-enlist-us-army-to-rebuilt-fitzroy-river-bridge/

[Marty_d]

8 hours ago, red750 said:

 

The mooning gargoyle of Freiburg minster. 

He's been in prison a bit long.

[kgwilson]

Whatever happened to Bailey bridges? They were cheap to manufacture, easy to transport and easy and fast to erect. After WW2 they were everywhere and some still exist. That may be a good temporary way to get back on track. They are only single lane but that wouldn't matter.

[onetrack]

Bailey bridges are still in widespread use, and you can still find them in every country in the world, and they do come in dual lane, as well as single lane. There are civil copies and alternative designs available from numerous companies, who see a market for this type of emergency bridge.

 

However, BB's are still regarded as a very temporary solution, and they suffer from serious load limits unless multiple piers or pylons are added to reduce span length.

I STR the standard military BB bridge load limit is 60 tonnes, and this requires triple height frames and relatively short spans.

 

Then there's aging, wear, and corrosion problems with older BB panels. These factors are very dependent on how the panels have been used and stored.

The State of Michigan has installed a large BB-style on Hwy M-30 over Tobacco River in 2021, to replace a bridge washed away by a 1-in-500 year flood in 2020 that burst two dams.

 

However, this bridge is not a military BB, it's an ACROW design, similar to the BB. The structure was built from all-new materials and fully galvanised to guarantee a 15 yr lifespan.

 

https://galvanizeit.org/project-gallery/m-30-tobacco-river-bridge#:~:text=A pre-engineered modular steel,rain in May of 2020.

 

Main Roads W.A. haven't been sitting on their hands. They have lost quite a number of important smaller bridges in the S.W. of W.A. in the last 5-6 years, due to storm damage and fire destroying formerly satisfactory wooden bridges.

MRWA did a major assessment of their ability to cope with a serious small bridge loss in W.A. - but that assessment was based on the smaller bridges and rivers of the S.W. of W.A. - not the major bridges and massive rivers of the North of W.A.

 

https://na.eventscloud.com/file_uploads/47781e7c6918d9df625cd15c442c90b8_Newhouse.pdf

 

MRWA developed a strategy from that assessment, to be prepared for prompt replacement of any smaller, important bridge that was crucial to transport in Southern W.A.

However, the MRWA strategy has been whacked for six somewhat, with the loss of the Fitzroy River bridge - purely because of the River size and width, and the size of the Fitzroy River bridge.

 

The greatest single problem is that triple road trains grossing 120 tonnes are the main freight movement vehicles in 98% of W.A. (the only exception is within about 50kms of the metropolitan area).

This weight loading level poses a major problem to a quick restoration of the Fitzroy River bridge. The American highways have a maximum 55 ton limit, no matter where the highway is located.

 

They rarely use road trains, and in the few areas they do, they only run small doubles (what we call pocket road trains) - and they're still stuck with that 55 ton limit.

Our current bridge design for road train routes utilises very large pre-stressed concrete girders and pylons, and this is what is needed for a Fitzroy River bridge replacement.

 

However, the beauty of the Northern regions of W.A. is that the Rivers are largely intermittent flows - even if the flows are huge when they do run.

On that basis, it's likely that a workable temporary solution to the Fitzroy River crossing will probably involve restoration of the original low-level crossing with road-base fill and some large Armco-style galvanised steel culverts, and probably some smaller level of concrete.

There are many iron ore railway creek and river crossings in the North of W.A. that are successfully using large numbers of large diameter Armco-style culverts to deal with sizeable volumes of water.

They can even produce the steel culverts on-site, utilising a semi-trailer-mounted former and steel plate coils - although the heavier versions are usually delivered pre-formed in bolted sections.

 

https://www.roundel.com.au/on-site-manufacturing/

 

 

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by onetrack

[pmccarthy]

My wife just lit the fire and the dog lay down in front of it. BOM forecast has our 'feels like' temperature in single digits until Saturday afternoon. One degree tonight in Central Victoria. I'm glad this is mid-summer or it could get really cold.

[Old Koreelah]

Not far north of you, we’re sitting in front of the a. c. in a heatwave.

[nomadpete]

Ten degrees and raining.

 

But this is normal Taasmania summer

[onetrack]

No single digits here - but after all, you are in Bendigo! (the only place worse is Ballarat!) We're having a nice moderate Summer, mid to high 30's, and minimas around 17-24.

 

http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/forecasts/perth.shtml

[facthunter]

Ballarat and Goulburn are similar. COLD. There will be snow abv 1500 meters tonight between here and the border. and probably in the Kosciusko area. Mt Macedon is close and 1010 metres. 

[red750]

We had summer, last Wednesday afternoon. I was in the toilet and missed it. Now back to winter. Heater, blankets and beanie.

[facthunter]

Think how boring it would be if each day was a humid 32 degrees. You work better when cool. You've heard of Joe Cool But not Joe Hot (& sweaty)..  Nev 

[Jerry_Atrick]

You're right, Nev, but I prefer Sweaty Betty to Jow Cool, any day.

[facthunter]

When it's cool you have one  each side. No sweat.   Nev

[Marty_d]

7 hours ago, facthunter said:

When it's cool you have one  each side. No sweat.   Nev

Nah, one of my mates tried that,  got into real trouble.   One of his girlfriend's friends was drunk and crashed in their bed, and when his girlfriend reached down she found the other girl's hand already there.

Sparks flew, and not in a good way...

[facthunter]

Limited imagination.  Possessive instincts. Insecurity.   Nev

[red750]

Reasonably wet, but definitely cold! Only 11 deg at the moment here in Melbourne (3:45pm). Freeze the pricks off a barbed wire fence.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Positively balmy for this neck of the woods

[facthunter]

They don't know what COLD is in Australia. Unless you live in Goulburn or Ballarat.  Nev

[willedoo]

There's cold and there's cold. Lately on the radio they've been also giving this new 'feels like' temperature reading. My guess is that it compensates for humidity and wind chill. I know standard temperature readings don't tell the full story. I've been much warmer at 20 degrees below in Canada than at 2 or 3 above in western Queensland. Mind you, that Canadian temperature is with no wind chill and a certain amount of warmth would reflect off the snow.

 

I found in Canada that as long as there was no significant wind, good clothing would keep the cold out. It's a totally different cold in some parts of Australia as no matter how much good clothing you have on, the cold seems to seep into your bones. In Alberta, I found 30 below quite reasonable, but once it got to 35+ below, it started getting cold real quick. I struck 40 below at Grand Prairie in Alberta, and I recon that was definitely past the point of no return. -40 was like being in an industrial freezer.

[onetrack]

We've had some rain today from a trough that started off the West Coast. The trough turned into a depression that's formed off the coast from Geraldton - but despite the rain coming in from the North, and with a NE/NNE wind, it's been quite cold - it was only 12.7°C at 12:30PM. However, the cloud has broken up this afternoon, and the temperature has gone up to about 16.5° at 4:00PM.

 

You blokes in SA and Vic and the lower parts of NSW must be looking forward to that polar blast of Antarctic cold that is racing straight up from the lower latitudes. Look for snow on the Alps tomorrow.

The cold wind we've had for the past 2 days is all coming from that pool of bitterly cold air in the Bight.

 

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

 

The BOM reckons we're nearly all in for a warmer-than-normal Autumn and Winter. Lets see how right their guesswork is, this time around.

 

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks/#/overview/summary/?ref=marketing

 

Edited May 6, 2023 by onetrack

[old man emu]

Just as long as a massive High Pressure area develops over Central West NSW in about 12 days, I'll be happy to welcome Jack Frost on the first of June.

[red750]

You'd think there was an iceberg in Pt Phillip Bay. Minimum of 3°C a couple of nights ago.

[nomadpete]

Bunch a whingers!

 

Frost this morn - at +3 deg.

Forecast is neg 2 tomorrow.

 

But I guess we are noticably closer to antarctica than most of you guys.

 

BTW there is a forecast for Southern Aurora tomorrow. If I'm lucky the clouds might thin out enough to see it!

[willedoo]

I finally found out how to access the BOM site with Firefox browser. For the last year or more, every time I want to go to the BOM site, I've had to use Chrome or Brave to do it. Both those will connect straight away. Edge won't connect and just comes up with a 'page is not secure'. On Firefox, you have to go into privacy and security settings and set it to ' Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all windows'. Then when you try to connect, Firefox will show a page with the option 'go to HTTP site instead'. Click on that and you get the BOM glitch that says it doesn't support HTTPS, but after a few seconds, it will allow you to connect. It's a bit of a nuisance, but quicker than opening another browser and waiting for it to start working.

 

The problem is mainly with the BOM site's code, but they are not interested in fixing it. Some Firefox users have been having trouble with the BOM site since 2021.