I got the irritating ‘unauthorised’ page in Firefox (on Windows), but eventually saw the nice dusting (after some irritating going to the home page, navigating, getting the error again & reloading the page).
Following a storm that went through Waurn Ponds, Geelong on Tuesday evening, the Bureau of Meteorology has today confirmed that it was a tornado that hit.
Christ it’s cold in Brisbane this arvo. At 4pm, temp is 15C and feels like 12C according to the BOM. First time I’ve done my shopping track and considered taking my European jacket.
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Enjoy your one day of winter @MTLCK.
The temperatures across the east are a little bit arse-about at the moment, with Moree registering a colder maximum temperature than both Canberra and Hobart. All due to the nature of this low pressure system which is flinging cold inland air a fair way north, while leaving areas further south in milder oceanic air.
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Yep, days like this make you realise just how poorly equipped this city is for anything below about 20 degrees. Tomorrow will be much the same too.
I actually love these wintery blasts up here, still warm enough during the day and makes you appreciate how generally pleasant it is the rest of the time (well, summer excepted which is awful here). Plus, reminds me of home a bit…
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Oh dear Egg Man, I can hear you pining for a good old fashioned Victorian winter. Grass is always greener eh?
As for me, I’m definitely not missing Sydney’s weather. ‘Winter’ down there is nice, but I always dreaded the first hot day of spring which nearly always comes about mid September these days. Down here it’s very rare to get 30C before late October, and it’s only a one off if it happens. Consistent heat doesn’t arrive until around Christmas and backs off from mid February. If you head to the VIC coast or Tassie in early Feb that’s only about a month of high heat you have to endure.
You need some toughening up 
I think 30 degrees is nice! (as long as its not humid as well).
Christmas to mid March is the most enduring part for me, its usually either 35 degrees or more, OR its humid. Thankfully there are just enough cooler days in between to provide some relief.
30 and dry is fine…in summer. September is too early for 30C weather in any shape or form. In Sydney and Newcastle, there is the threat of genuinely hot weather (35+) for at least half the year; down here it’s mainly the three designated summer months. The nights are a heck of a lot cooler as well, due to the much lower humidity.
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Who to believe? 
Seven coldest May day in 40 years
Brisbane Times coldest May day in more than half a decade
Brisbane Times 2nd article coldest May day in 98 years
Nine coldest May day in almost a century
ABC TV coldest May day on record
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14 in Townsville - those poor people wouldn’t have known what to do.
Yesterday felt positively Victorian here - lots of cloud, failed to warm up, bit of a breeze from the southwest.
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I wish we had those sorts of negative anomalies down south…I’d be well and truly snowbound. But that’s not the way it works in Australia unfortunately. Southern Australia gets large positive anomalies from the land to its north, but smaller negative anomalies from the ocean to its south. The reverse is true for northern Aus (large negative anomalies from the landmass to the south, smaller positive ones).
Places like the US get both large positive and negative anomalies, because there’s nothing much to block tropical and polar airmasses in most places. The exception to this is the west coast which is more like Australia: ocean and mountains blocking most polar air.
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And of the 5 headlines regarding Brisbane’s Saturday weather, this one was correct.
At least according to this
While Brisbane dipped to an unremarkable 11C, the maximum temperature of just 15C made it the coldest May day since 1922.
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It was a lovely weekend!
Yeah, it was “cool” by local standards for a few days before the real cold hit on Saturday.
It was 23 and overcast on Friday and everyone at work was complaining that it was “freezing”.
Saturday was glorious, we went out on Saturday and there was either two extremes.
People either had: No jumper / long pants (Because they don’t own any) and were freezing, or they were dressed up in ski gear.
The problem up here is that the housing is designed to stay cooler and a lot of people don’t have any heating.
It was 14 outside on Saturday and 15 inside my house, so I can understand why people may have struggled.
Even this morning, it was 8 outside at my place and 12 inside when I woke up. I’m assuming that’s probably not something that happens down south as houses would be well insulated from the cold.
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The cool breezes combined with less traffic pollution due to COVID-19 saw one of the clearest skies in years in Brisbane on the weekend. The view to the Glasshouses in the north was spectacular.
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Here we go… Cue in the climate change activists.
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I noticed the report in 9News’ late bulletin last night bizarrely omitted mention of global warming as the driver of the more severe weather.
It’s strange how people can still insist on denying facts, even when the country has been burning right in front of us, and solar & wind are the cheapest form of electricity generation, even with storage (e.g. battery, hydro), so what’s the problem?
This shouldn’t be a political issue; science has forecast this, and it’s happening. Ignoring this problem has just been making it worse.
Have a read; Insurance Australia Group (who trade as CGU, Coles & NRMA Insurance) have warned that not only fires have & will increase in severity but also other expensive weather events like large hail. This is making insurance prohibitively expensive, so more people will lose everything when these disasters happen instead of being able to claim on insurance & rebuild/replace.
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Here’s something that may interest a few members.
Google have recently updated their satellite images for Bathurst, NSW. The last update occurred around August of last year, in the midst of the town’s worst drought on record. It was extremely dry, some parks turned into dirt. Very depressing. Since then, especially this year, we’ve had some very healthy rain, it was incredible to see the town turn too green in the matter of weeks. It is probably the most green I have seen the city. Here is a comparison:
August 2019
May 2020
August 2019
May 2020
I was able to capture these due to a glitch on Google Maps, I assume the new map data was/is still loading.
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My take is that even if climate change was ‘alarmist’ and ‘overblown’, what exactly is the harm in trying to move to reduce our carbon emissions, just in case the ‘alarmists’ are correct? It’s all about hedging the bets. Logic would dictate you’d have to be absolutely certain that the scientists’ climate change predictions are wrong before you completely push back and promote coal again. Even if there was a 10% chance that the predictions were correct, it’d still be a good idea to take preventative measures.
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