Meanwhile the dry conditions continue over the SE mainland. The big dry is now spreading eastward to Canberra; although we had a bit of rain last Saturday the rainfall deficits are starting to mount. I don’t expect any significant rainfall until next spring here, and that’s contingent on the Indian Ocean Dipole being negative or at least cool neutral.
The autumn smoke season has also started. After a couple of clear air days it’s quite hazy and I notice the Yarra Valley is choking in smoke. It’s totally at odds with the general movement toward less air pollution. HR burning won’t stop fires like 2019-20. Applying a cost benefit analysis, HR burning provides a certain downside (air pollution) with an uncertain payoff (bushfire mitigation, probably only for less intense fires).
Hasn’t been dry here… 366 mm rain YTD to 31 Mar here in Newcastle (vs 313 mm Avg).
Loving the weather today… sunny and 26 degrees with a dew point of 14… perfect weather in my books. Bottle that up please.
By SE mainland I mean south of Sydney and also west of the Great Dividing Range (in NSW) as well as VIC and SA. Newcastle is very much in eastern Australia, as are Nowra, Braidwood and Bega.
Tasman Sea rain systems struggle to penetrate the Great Dividing Range. Bungendore is literally 10 km west of the Divide and doesn’t get much significant rainfall from the east. We need NW systems.
VIC and SA don’t get much from the Tasman either. The one exception is East Gippsland, east of about Sale.
Yes, Easter Sunday is forecast to be 30 degrees in Sydney!
Melbourne and Adelaide have had 30+ degrees days over the last weekend too.
Welp when do we crack open another cyclone thread this late in the season.
We’ve been getting them down here too.
And in SE NSW. There was a tornadic funnel near Braidwood yesterday- unsure if it made contact with the ground.
April thunderstorms can happen though, the most famous example being the 1999 Sydney hailstorm. The cells yesterday weren’t dissimilar to that with a cold pool moving up the coast, causing the instability. With warmer sea surface temperatures in the Tasman, out of season storms may occur more frequently.
I was grateful for the storms as it’s been bone dry here of late. The drought is expanding eastward from VIC and SA, though coastal NSW is likely to escape it at this stage.
I woke up about 10 minutes before it hit, and felt the building move, it only lasted about 5 seconds. I’m about 60 km from where the earthquake struck.
That’s earthquake Number 4 for me that I’ve felt,