Being in the civil service, we are able to book Cluny Lodge, a bungalow owned by the Singapore government. D often suggested we stay there, but I kept putting it off because I liked Strawberry Park & am usually lazy to try anything new. Our colleague C the Toothbrush Man brought his family there to stay once, though, & after hearing about it from him I decided to give it a try.
Lane leading to Cluny Lodge, lined by firs supposedly planted by Lee Kuan Yew; Cluny Lodge in morning sunlig
We had a fairly typical "Sumatra" on 15 Aug. "Sumatra" is a nickname for a squall line that often forms over the Indonesian land mass of Sumatra & then moves over the Malacca Straits to affect Singapore and Malaysia.
This particular Sumatra seems to have started organising itself just before affecting Singapore.
"Sumatras" often affect us during the night, between 3am and 6am; one can see a line of echoes on the radar steadily making its way eastward. If there's no bad weather around w
A Von Karman vortex street caused by the airflow over the island of Jan Mayen in the Greenland Sea :
Such vortices can be seen in many other places; these trails off Alaska's Aleutian Islands are even more spectacular :
I must confess I have a soft spot for the Jan Mayen vortices, though, because Jan Mayen was where I first heard of the phenomenon ... the book Spacious Skies had several photos of them. I find them amazing - never realised such regular & intricate cloud patterns existed
Tropical Storm "Greg" (43W) was an unusual weather system in that tropical cyclones (TCs) seldom occur at latitudes low enough to affect Malaysia. The country is divided into West Malaysia (Peninsular Malaysia) and East Malaysia (consisting of the states of Sabah & Sarawak).
GMS IR image at 240400Z. 2 hours later, the JTWC upgraded the cloud cluster to Tropical Depression status
"Greg" was first observed as a cloud cluster that developed on the night of 20 Dec 1996, over the South China
There are a lot of funny weather cartoons on the net, like this one :
However I can't find any I like as much as the following two, which have been pasted on my locker for years :
I love Woodstock; :lol: he's just so cute. :lol:
In early 1998, we heard that a team of mountaineers from Singapore was planning to try climbing Mt Everest. They were hoping MSS could provide them with weather data, & I remember two of the team (I think Khoo Swee Chiow & Johann Annuar) coming to our office to have a look at what was available. Unlike the days of Edmund Hillary, things are so high-tech now that we were able to email the data to them every day.
Since that first expedition, there have been many others, but at the time it
A multicell thunderstorm that occurred some time ago, recorded with the weather radar at Paya Lebar Airbase. The second cell can be seen forming after the first has dissipated.
After the Hurricane Workshop in Miami, I met D at Heathrow & we rented a car & drove straight to Wales. It might have been more logical to stay on in the U.S. & have a holiday there, but I wasn't so familiar with getting around the U.S. & driving on the right side of the road; I'd lived a year in the UK & I wanted a holiday where I could really relax. I chose Wales because I'd already been around Scotland & England.
Some of the places we visited were Tenby, Aberystwyth,
We had a flurry of calls from the police, civil defence and the public today, because a distinct waterspout was sighted off the southeastern coast of the island.
Our radar showed that the weather system producing it was just a small thunderstorm. Which goes to show that you don't need a large and impressive thunderstorm to produce an impressive waterspout.
What is as amazing as the waterspout is the speed at which news travels nowadays. Practically everyone on this island has a cellphone
Dec 20, 2006 24 hours of rain mayhem Floods and landslides hit island Fallen trees hold up traffic SINGAPORE was lashed by the third-largest deluge of rain in recorded history yesterday, causing heavy flooding in parts of the island, bringing down trees and triggering landslides. The rain was most intense over the northern and central parts of the island, where flooding affected at least four locations. Vehicles were diverted from several traffic junctions, which had been rendered impassable
May 15, 2007 The sun rises on S'pore's solar industry Landmark buildings may go solar; NUS in talks on research, teaching centre By Jessica Cheam THE solar industry is shaping up as a sunrise one. Landmark buildings - and there are so many on this sun-drenched island - may soon sport solar panels that do double duty as roofs. Solar-energy architects here are pushing for more than just solar panels slapped atop buildings to turn sunlight into electricity: They want to make what are called p
When Pat & I started work, colleagues would sometimes joke that we should double up as TV weather girls for MSS. Fortunately, MSS tried this out sometime before we joined & scrapped the idea because none of the forecasters was telegenic enough. Personally I would find it quite horrid to have to appear on TV. :lol: Some years later we really did have some weather girls, the first of which was Charlene, sister of one of our local actors Adrian Pang.
Presenting weather on TV isn't as s
Am taking a break from reminiscing to post something more current.
I was checking out the forum at the Hong Kong Weather Underground for the first time a couple of days ago. This thread caught my attention. I was amused because the members were all lamenting the fact that no tropical cyclone had hit Hong Kong lately, & they were monitoring a tropical depression (07W) currently over the Philippines (see satellite picture below) & debating about whether it would affect Hong Kong or not.
And I was wondering why the net was so slow. I'd received a dozen SMS alerts on the Taiwan quake, but didn't take much notice because it was so far away ... we're more concerned with quakes around the Sumatra region. Who would think that a quake in Taiwan would still affect us!
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Dec 28, 2006, 0.00 am (Singapore time)
Home users and businesses cut off from websites a
When Pat & I returned to Singapore, we were each assigned to understudy a senior forecaster and started operational work. The shift considered of a 6-day cycle : 2 day shifts, then a night shift followed by 3 days off. The first day shift was devoted to aviation and shipping, while the second involved public weather forecasts, issuing TAFs & trend statements & sending out lightning risk warnings to various clients, mostly golf courses & construction companies. Night shift include
The Straits Times May 26, 2007 A towering sight off the east coast By Andrea Ong THOUSANDS of people from the city centre to Changi were transfixed yesterday afternoon as a large water spout appeared off the east coast. The water funnel rose majestically from the sea, and sent people scrambling for their cameras and cellphones. In fact, the water spout broke all previous records for reader reaction at The Straits Times' online portal Stomp, with 150 SMSes, MMSes and e-mails streaming in wit
Well, we still have some way to go before biofuels are used in Singapore. But at least this is a beginning.
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The Straits Times
Oct 9, 2006
From DIY biodiesel to slick new venture
By Leong Chan Teik
IF ALL cars in Singapore ran on diesel, some motorists here might discover a new hobby: making their own fuel. Mr Kom Mam Sun, 32, hit on the idea two yea
Hi, for those interested, I have updated my waterspout entry with a radar image of the thunderstorm producing the waterspout.
Here is a series of radar images of the squall line that affected the island on 30 April, which our Finnish forecaster was referring to (see my earlier post on 20 May).
The gust front is quite distinct.
We had an unusually large number of squall lines on consecutive days this April. April is the transition period between our two monsoons (northeast monsoon and sou
I was amused by the following email from a gentleman from Finland...he certainly is very enthusiastic - I find meteorology interesting, but I'm not sure I would carry a windmeter around like he does!
Will post some radar images of the squall line he mentioned when I have the time.
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Hello!
I am a forecaster from Finnish Met. Institute. I got a chance to visit Singapore second time 24-30.4.2007. I trav
"Sun Sad" by Mike Muk
The smoke haze is back in Singapore. It made front page news in the local newspapers & was reported in Channel News Asia as well. Quite a number of people also sent hazy photos to the Stomp website. The National Environment Agency (of which Met Services Division is a part) has also posted a haze update on its website.
For the haze to be such a newsworthy item actually speaks well for our usual air quality - in some large cities, smog prevails every day & such at
THE ASMC
A few days after I started work, I discovered that MSS was hosting a research centre called the ASMC (ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre). At that time there were three scientists attached there, Dr Rosa Perez from PAGASA (the Philippines' Met. Office) and Tukul Rameyo Adi & Suratno from BMG, Indonesia. Adi and Suratno were not exactly meteorologists but doing some technical work for BMG. Adi once showed me his wedding photo & I couldn't help laughing because although he l
Singaporeans experienced two rounds of tremors in the space of two hours on Tuesday, following two earthquakes in Padang, Indonesia. Singapore's Meteorological Services Division said the first tremors were felt at about 11.50am after an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale struck Padang on the island of Sumatra. The epicentre was 50 kilometres north-northeast of Padang and some 430 kilometres south-west of Singapore. The second round of tremors occurred around 1.50pm after another ea
Besides doing civilian work at Changi Airport, we also have forecasters stationed at military airbases around the island. There was a shortage of manpower at one time, so several of the Changi forecasters had to cover duty there, including me.
The work consisted mainly of monitoring the weather and issuing a warning if a thunderstorm was going to affect the airbase. It was a good experience because I did a lot more outdoor observation there than I did at Changi. In Changi, we were issuing warni
Satellite pictures yesterday clearly showed the haze wafting in from Kalimantan.
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ChannelNewsAsia has devoted an entire section to the haze. One viewer sent in this rather nice photo of the moon :
The haze gave last night's moon an atmospheric orange cast as seen here beside one of the office buildings in the CBD. – Photo from Stuart Clyne
Meanwhile, t
