January Update - Bendigo
Bendigo actually was more dry than the mean average this year. In January, we only had 29mm, down from 52mm in Jan 2022 and 35mm from the average. It was very hot (though not as hot as 27th/28th December). At least we did get some rain, as February has been very dry so far (only 6mm) although actually nearly double Feb 2022’s with only 3.2mm.
Monday Yeppoon:
I don’t have air con in my room a split cannot be installed due to the layout of the walls … only a cassette split in the roof might work but … i have a window and a ceiling fan … room faces SE it’s never to uncomfortable.
42 percent humidity doesn’t seem too bad … but with a temp of 37 deg and a dew point of 23 deg that’s quite humid.
I was just looking for the weather where i live here in Ballarat and this came up 
the weather.bom.gov.au/locatiion/ will be retiring on march 14th, For forecasts, observations, radar and warnings visit bom.gov.au or download the BOM Weather app
I think it must be the humidity here the leather/rubber? black around my Panasonic headphones is starting to peel off … I can buy the replacements off Ebay from China … last bought 2 years ago …
I noticed the same when my mum used to buy new shoes and leave them in the walk in robe the material would disintegrate sometimes.
Maybe I will have to keep the headphones in the front of the house away from the breeze where it’s drier .
Same thing with the windscreen wipers only 4 years and they need replacing … place said it is due to the climate here being hard on them.
Glad we don’t have carpet in the house … with all the sand and the humidity here … I heard that in Townsville mushrooms were growing in the carpet it was so humid in the floods a few years ago.
I can understand that.
My cousins house in Cairns has lino floors because of the humidity up there
We have tiles . Though the winter just gone it did make it feel cold with the tiled floors and big windows .
Gabrielle is expected to hit Norfolk Island on Saturday.
And New Zealand will be next.
Is it normal for NZ to get ex cyclones so often? Back in 2013,15 and 17 they used to hit Qld .
The upper North Island gets them semi frequently; I think even one or two over the years have made landfall in the far north at Cat 1 strength. Most have undergone extratropical transition by the time they reach NZ’s latitudes, though.
Upper level steering winds are usually westerly once you get south of about Brisbane’s latitude, so most cyclones that enter the subtropics move away from Australia and go across the ditch. Of course there have been rare exceptions; this page from the BOM is quite informative vis-a-vis cyclones in NSW:
http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/cyclone/tcnsw.shtml
I wouldn’t wish a high end tropical cyclone on anyone, though. Were you in Yeppoon for TC Marcia just out of interest? That caused some decent damage around there.
The ever warming sea surface temps in the Tasman Sea will probably make TC impacts more frequent in NZ (but not necessarily in NSW and QLD, for the reasons outlined).
Down here we are talking bushfires again which isn’t surprising after all the grass growth that’s now dry as chips. Already a 1000 ha+ grass fire at Wee Jasper (just NW of Canberra) this past weekend which unfortunately I was upwind of and got smoked out Saturday night. A lengthy heatwave is on the cards at the end of the week with no definite end, so I expect more fires to break out around here.
Yes … only damage was part of our fence the town didn’t fare too badly and the further south you went towards Emu Park and Zilzie the less the damage.
Was 37.7 deg in Yeppoon yesterday humidity dropped as low as 30 percent still muggy… wasn’t quite high enough to break the record of 38.3 in 2016 .
These rain events we can see generally a few days out, on the local front, Townsville to Cairns and further north will likely get a large rain event this Friday into the weekend as the monsoon heads south. Get more accurate data over the next 48 hours, but severe flooding coming to the far north this weekend.
I’m in Hawaii for a few days and it is more humid here than I thought it would be…
It’s about 26 degrees and 65% humidity since it is late winter here, but it doesn’t feel much cooler than some of our summer days back home.
Hawaii is 21 degrees north of the equator, which puts a similar latitude to Mackay in QLD on the other side of the equator.
I also note my hotel room does not have carpet, presumably due to the humidity. I can definitely imagine it being quite uncomfortable here in June to August.
What is the dew point?
It sounds a bit like Townsville’s “winter”
Dew point looks to be 17 degrees Celsius.
Which doesn’t sound too bad.
The evenings here are quite nice though.
