Australian Weather

[NorthNSW]

Certainly was a powerful storm to hit Brisbane a couple of days ago on the 27th. No shortage of videos as it tracked straight through some of the most populated parts of city, including the CBD and other parts of the inner city, plenty to find on YouTube if you want to look for more.

 

The storm nearing the Brisbane CBD

(Source: South Brisbane Storms - Facebook)

 

Archerfield's observations (suburb of Brisbane), where the 141km/h gust was recorded

 

Video from Archerfield Airport at the time: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152949531574642

 

 

Bowling greens become white

 

Hail pelting down: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204769711735078

 

Colourful language in this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6trruUxfc

 

Picks up around the 1 minute mark

[NorthNSW]

And to add to the above post.

Windows / doors breaking during storm:

 

 

Window breaking: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=920705437948978&l=5436367470454061154

Edited November 29, 2014 by NorthNSW

[Styx]

Australia records warmest spring on record, beating the record set last year ( records since 1910 ).

 

 

Both October and November this spring set a monthly record for national mean temperature.

Four individual months in the last 2 years have had a record high mean maximum: Jan 2013, September 2013, October 2014, November 2014.

 

 

-34% rainfall deficiency. The dry heat is setting up an elevated summer fire risk in the east.

 

------------------

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/season/aus/summary.shtml

Edited December 1, 2014 by Styx

[knocker]

Doesn't bode well Styx.

[Gray-Wolf]

Have to agree guys. As we've seen throughout this century once we get a drying start the land is primed for higher temps later? I guess we'll now get the " B.O.M. is crap and they mess up all recording........ plus it is no where near as bad as in Wurah bonga back in 1874 ( for one day)......."

 

Apart from the Arctic it appears Oz is being singled out for runs of anomalous high temps?

[Styx]

...also noticable is the declining frequency of cool changes with any depth or duration penetrating ino the inland over the warmer months, causing extreme heat parcels to circulate around the continent, rather than cooling the land in a more widespread fashion.

 

---------------

 

It's 830pm and 12.9C in Hobart. An easterly onshore breeze for several days, no sun for a week. Some say it's an easterly gloom I say it's refreshing. Maximums near 15 and 16C. Caught this image by absolute chance this morning. 'Photobombed by a pigeon'.

 

It's 530pm right now in Western Australia and 44.5C in Marble Bar ( NW corner of the state ).

It's renowned for it's summertime heat but forecast for Saturday is 49C...that will go close to an Australian December record.

 

 

Getting close to the magic 50C already and the hottest part of the year is still four weeks away.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Styx

[Styx]

Christmas

 

 

GFS, overlapped with forecast maximum temperatures for the capital cities from the BOM.

Nice and cool in Tasmania.

[NorthNSW]

There's been fairly persistent instability during this month so far around the local area but also across much of the state in general, especially earlier this month in central and southern NSW where there were consecutive days of severe storms. Sydney recorded seven consecutive days of thunderstorms for the first time in recorded history: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/welcome-to-queensland-sydney-20141209-12385d.html

While it doesn't happen every year in northern NSW or southern QLD, these long consecutive days of storms [5, 6, 7 days +] like the above are not unheard of as troughs have higher chance of stalling or becoming slow moving once they get this far north.

A Severe Storm Warning has been issued for at least somewhere within the local district on 14 of the 18 days so far this month. Most of the strongest storms have tended to be nearer to the ranges though, passing over fairly unpopulated land (mostly National Park, forest or farmland).

A squall line moved through northern parts of NSW and southern parts of QLD today, bringing very strong winds, a couple of observed gustnadoes, bursts of heavy rain and plenty of lightning (the odd hail report but nothing serious).

Here in town we had a good summer's thunderstorm, not severe though the lightning was quite frequent and there were some close bolts, including an extremely close strike who's thunder actually hurt my ears, like someone stabbed my eardrum.

Lost under a sea of lightning:

 

A video of gustnado near Toowoomba: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1018193788196708

 

Brisbane

(Source: Higgins Storm Chasing - Facebook)

 

Coffs Harbour

(Source: Higgins Storm Chasing - Facebook)

 

Observations from nearby Coffs Harbour, showing the very humid pre-storm conditions and then the storm itself:

 

Archived radar loop of today on the 512km view between 11am and 9pm EDT: http://www.theweatherchaser.com/radar-loop/IDR281-grafton/2014-12-18-00/2014-12-18-10

Edited December 18, 2014 by NorthNSW

[NorthNSW]

I spent the weekend in Tamworth to celebrate Christmas at a relative's place, about a 4¼ hour drive away from here. Some photos during my trip are below.

 

Tamworth (the entire city isn't quite photographed with parts of it stretching off out of view to the east and northwest). The city is on the western side of the Great Dividing Range, though isn't too far from the foothills of the range (the range in the distance is a spur of the Liverpool Range, the Great Divide is out of view further to the left (east). Around 650mm of rain a year is average for the city:

 

Big Golden Guitar in Tamworth. If you don't get a photo of it, then you haven't visited Tamworth lol!

 

Convection occurring near Tamworth. This cloud didn't end up becoming a storm, but there were storms about in other places:

 

Kootingal is where we were staying. A small town about 15 minutes from the centre of Tamworth, you can pretty much call it a part of Tamworth these days:

 

The Walcha area in the Northern Tabelands district (the Northern Tablelands / northern ranges are also known as the 'New England' region), on top of the Great Dividing Range. Around 800-900mm of rain a year is average for this particular area.

 

 

Mount Seaview area on the coastal side of the range in the upper Hastings Valley, west of Port Macquarie (Port Macquarie is about 60kms south of here). This area gets almost 1800mm on average a year.

 

You wouldn't think all these places were in drought judging by these pictures, the greenery in these areas is the result of fairly persistent storm activity and the absence of very hot temperatures this month. You can see on the 12 month rainfall map, that most places in the northeast part of the state have actually received well below average rainfall:

 

 

The forecast for Christmas Day and Boxing Day in Coffs Harbour (which usually gets similar weather/temps to here). Personally, I think the chance of showers/storms tomorrow is a bit too high though, I'd probably put it around 30-40%. Boxing Day's chances are probably about right though:

 

Merry Christmas everybody!

Edited December 24, 2014 by NorthNSW

[tropicbreeze]

After a hot end to winter and a very hot build-up season in the north BOM is finally predicting the monsoon trough to be over the Top End by Friday 2nd January. It's likely to bring the coldest run of daily maximum temperatures since January/February earlier this year. Hopefully it'll also bring the rainfall up closer to normal. So far my December rain total is 53% of average for the month.

[NorthNSW]

We had our wettest day of the year on Sunday, receiving 84.6mm at the house. On average, we get one daily fall above 100mm during the year. Obviously varies year to year, like last year we had 4 days with 100mm+, but there were none this year. Sunday was a beautiful rainy day, love it when the weather is like this -

 

 

The day before there were very localised but heavy falls in parts of the Tweed Valley (far northeast corner of NSW) thanks to an area of convergence, bringing up to 299mm (the vast majority of this rain fell in a 12 hour period) -

 

We had our 50th thunderday of the year today with a weak high-based thunderstorm passing several kilometres south of the town -

 

The very good rain this December has reduced rainfall deficits somewhat, so I expect the yearly rainfall map for northern parts of NSW to have the 'below average' (Decile 2-3) shading dominate rather than the 'well below average' (Decile 1) shading dominating. The rain this month is not drought-breaking rain for northern NSW, but definitely drought-easing rain. Ideally, we'll need decent follow-up rain in Jan and/or Feb.

 

Predicted weather for New Years Eve & New Years Day -

 

Edited December 30, 2014 by NorthNSW

[NorthNSW]

Isolated though severe storms affected parts of the northern coast between here and NSW/QLD Border in the early hours of this morning. The storms were pretty much stationary, so if one happened to form above it would basically just sit there and rain its guts out. Goonengerry recorded the highest total with 290mm falling (205mm of that falling in three hours) -

 

Cars swept away by New Year's Eve flash flooding on NSW north coast

By Elloise Farrow-Smith and Justine Frazier

Flash flooding has swept about 10 cars into a local creek near Mullumbimby on the New South Wales north coast.

About 175 millimetres of rain from a severe thunderstorm fell just after midnight at Upper Main Arm in the hills behind Mullumbimby.

Hundreds of partygoers were left stranded at Kohinur Hall during a New Year's Eve party when a local creek that feeds into the Brunswick River overflowed.

Inspector Darren Steel said those who parked close to the creek did not have much to celebrate.

"A number of cars were parked close to creeks and causeways and we believe there were about 10 vehicles swept into the creek by the rising waters," Insp Steel said.

State Emergency Service crews were called to help rescue people who had tried to cross creeks at Upper Main Arm and other areas around Mullumbimby.

At one stage, a car was swept away from a crossing into flood water, trapping those inside the car.

The SES said it would be closely monitoring weather patterns in the area after the heavy rainfall.

Long-time resident Jinta Veit said it was the wildest storm she had ever experienced.

"Our house shook and the ground shook and it was right above us, it was so wild," Ms Veit said.

"It's unusual for us to get 175mm in such a short time. Seven inches in a few hours is just unbelievable, it was just solid."

Ms Veit said there was nothing anyone could do except continue partying.

"Unless you left before 2:00am then you were just stuck there," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-01/nye-flash-flood/5996366

 

The yearly rainfall chart for here, while it was below average, compared to other locations on the northern coast our deficit wasn't too large. It was probably the locally wet/stormy February that made the difference here as most other places in the region had a dry to very dry February -

(Thunderday = day with thunder heard) (The thunderstorm count is the number of t'storms that passed over the house during the year, near-misses/nearby storms are not included in the count)

 

Graph of rainfall here during past 20 years -

 

Rainfall Total, Decile, and Anomaly Map for NSW during 2014 (if you compare it to the Decile map I posted three posts above you can see the benefit the good December rains had in reducing deficits), and also a map showing the difference between 2013 and 2014 rainfall in NSW -

[Styx]

Bushfire emergency unfolding in South Australia as I write this, according to local media reports. It is the second and final day of desert origion heat that has made it to the coastline, the first time for the summer. A record dry warm spring there together with strong winds today is producing a fairly dire situation on the outskirts of that states capital city. Yesterdays maximum in Adelaide was 44.1C - the first state capital to exceed 40C this season -  (January record 46.1 in 1939 ). City is shrouded very heavily in smoke this morning.

 

In the adjoining state of Victoria, Melbourne managed 39C yesterday, and the forecast today is for 41C, and especially windy.

 

Australia has had two severe bushfire seasons side by side, each with the loss of some 400-500 houses. Conditions today look pretty bad.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Styx

[Styx]

2014 was Australia's third warmest year 

 

 

Tasmania second 

 

[Styx]

Active monsoon brings widespread rain across Australia this month making this a particularly cool January on a national scale. Earlier, flood warning declarations were in force in every state and territory with significant falls in the Alice Springs region, South Australia and southern central Queensland -  easily exceeding their entire seasonal averages.   

 

It is a stark contrast to the widespread extreme heat of January 2013 and 2014.

[knocker]

Extreme heat: near-50 degree tops forecast for remote regions of Western Australia

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/extreme-heat-near50-degree-tops-forecast-for-remote-regions-of-western-australia-20150119-12tavc.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nc&eid=socialn:twi-13omn1677-edtrl-other:nnn-17/02/2014-edtrs_socialshare-all-nnn-nnn-vars-o&sa=D&usg=ALhdy28zsr6qiq

[Styx]

Latest forecast issued a short time ago shows 50 degrees is still a possibility on Friday 

 

 

But as knocker's news article says, chance will play a part in whether one of the few recording stations in the district will manage to record it.

50C+ has only been recorded three times in Australia by standardised stephenson screen thermometres ( twice in 1960 a day apart at two locations, and again in 1998 at one location ). 

 

Marble Bar has best potential 

 

 

Marble Bar has an arid climate with very hot summers and mild to warm winters. The town set a world record of most consecutive days of 100 Â°F (37.8 Â°C) or above, during a period of 160 days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.

During December and January, temperatures in excess of 45 Â°C (113 Â°F) are common, and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal body human temperature for 6 months each year. Rainfall mostly occurs in the summer months. Marble Bar receives 159.6 clear days annually. Dewpoint in the summers is between 10 and 15 Â°C (50 and 59 Â°F).

January average temperature range 26-41

[tropicbreeze]

Highest temperature records are from places below sea level. Marble Bar is about 180 metres above sea level. Imagine what another few hundred metres lower would do to them.

[NorthNSW]

Locally heavy downpours from thunderstorms brought falls of up to 228mm on Monday in the local region, with a number of other gauges picking up falls over 100mm.

Thunderstorms with locally heavy downpours occurred once again yesterday with as much as 146mm falling and a few other gauges receiving over 100mm too. The localised nature of the storms meant that rainfall varied greatly over short distances. Collombatti about 25kms SW of here received 96mm in an hour yesterday evening. We had 87mm fall here at the house yesterday, with a thunderstorm bringing 42.4mm in 40 minutes during the mid-afternoon. I reported that heavy downpour to the Bureau and it made the warning

 

The heavy rainfall caused flash flooding in some parts of the local area. This was along Crescent Head Road at its intersection with Stanley Folkard Pl, approx 4kms SE of Kempsey -

(Source: North Coast Storm Chasers - Facebook)

 

The storm that brought the heavy rain here yesterday afternoon, taken from Clybucca on the Pacific Highway looking east -

(Source: Higgins Storm Chasing - Facebook)

[Styx]

ABC24 weather presenter says it reached 49.2C at Yeelirrie, Western Australia yesterday. I think she said Yeelirrie. Mining town at 500m altitude. It's not an AWS so that figure is not currently listed on the BOM site. Subject to verification. With stagnant air there for the next two days...50C... come on!   

[Styx]

49.0C at Marble Bar, Western Australia today, 3:12pm. Perhaps this is Australia's highest temperature for the summer. The previous 2 summers saw a slightly higher peak. Not sure where the figure I quoted  yesterday came from, but it's not official.    

 

 

3:38pm Western Australia/ 6:38pm Eastern

BOM Meteye

 

Edited January 23, 2015 by Styx

[keithlucky]

49.0C at Marble Bar, Western Australia today, 3:12pm. Perhaps this is Australia's highest temperature for the summer. The previous 2 summers saw a slightly higher peak. Not sure where the figure I quoted  yesterday came from, but it's not official.    

 

 

3:38pm Western Australia/ 6:38pm Eastern

BOM Meteye

 

5 Jan 1922 Kalgoorlie Miner

HEAT AT MARBLE BAR

120.5 IN  THE  SHADE

Perth. Jan. 4. At Marble Bar yesterday the shade reading, showed a maximum of 120.5 degrees, and a minimum for the 21 hours of  81(?) degrees. Roebourne came a good second with 117 degrees.

[Styx]

Nothing wrong with that 1922 reading, it's on the BOM website. It was taken from a standardised stevenson screen, unlike many readings from other sites prior to about 1910, that were taken from thermometers placed in makeshift shelters such as beer box constructs for example, or in open tin sheds. It makes no sense to validate those extremes, especially if temperatures at other stations that had Stevenson screens in the same or adjoining district didn't match the extreme highs.  

 

The heat scenario today was interesting to watch because a rare 50C measurement was possible in the Pilbara district of WA  ( air temperature at 850hPa/1500m was 32-34 ).

The bureau did well to forecast this event.

As it turned out Marble Bar reached 49C.

It doesn't quite make it on to the top 10 list for Western Australia, and is even further down the scale for Australia.

 

But it's the weather, and it was exciting to follow and anticipate something that could have been significant

 

[keithlucky]

 Another example of BOM bending the truth and then being caught out

According to the Australian ABC news site, the new electronic thermometer measured a scorching 46°C (an all time high) last Tuesday. However an adjacent mercury thermometer showed only 41.5°C, i.e. a huge 4.5°C less! It turns out that the 46°C reading was a â€œspike†that lasted only a minute before disappearing.

As a consequence, the ABC writes, the “Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has withdrawn its advice Alice Springs recorded its hottest day on Tuesday, blaming a faulty thermometer for an incorrect temperature reading.â€

The old record of 45.2°C was set 55 years ago, in 1960. The ABC quotes climatologist Joel Lisonbee:

 

It looks like we had an instrument fault with our automatic weather station at the Alice Springs Airport. […] We have some mercury and glass thermometers that did not show that spike to 46C. […]

They showed the maximum temperature yesterday to be only 41.5C.â€

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/01/22/alice-springs-automatic-weather-station-inflated-temperature-by-4-5c-producing-false-record-high/#sthash.8shMg7M9.9opHDFVU.dpuf

According to the Australian ABC news site, the new electronic thermometer measured a scorching 46°C (an all time high) last Tuesday. However an adjacent mercury thermometer showed only 41.5°C, i.e. a huge 4.5°C less! It turns out that the 46°C reading was a â€œspike†that lasted only a minute before disappearing.

As a consequence, the ABC writes, the “Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has withdrawn its advice Alice Springs recorded its hottest day on Tuesday, blaming a faulty thermometer for an incorrect temperature reading.â€

The old record of 45.2°C was set 55 years ago, in 1960. The ABC quotes climatologist Joel Lisonbee:

-

Edited January 23, 2015 by keithlucky

[Styx]

Yes, the digital thermometer malfunctioned for a time at the Alice Springs site, it happens occasionally everywhere. It is not a situation unique to Australia. Since real-time observations are readily available on the BOM website for every Australian site and are archived online it's impossible for the BOM to "bend the truth". Most weather watchers in Australia knew it was an onerous reading (the forecast high was for 42). I am not sure what BOM department or office declared it was a record, but when they did, the media jumped all over it. It was probably a case that the Climate and historical department made that media release before the information was quality checked. Even though faults occur occasionally but are obvious and either subsequently corrected or not recorded, it's probably the first time a major Australian centre had a thermometer fault that created a false record, hence the premature announcement. Basically, it's no big deal.