Today could be fairly nasty for those in NE NSW and SE QLD. Lots of potential for supercells; here’s hoping that they don’t cause too much damage. With storms generally getting worse due to the elephant in the room, I’m happy to live in a fairly protected spot, although that means missing rain as well.
On the Brissy radar just now there are some showers. If they hang around for a bit they might just use up some of the convective energy and make the afternoon/evening cells less severe. But I’d still prepare for a shellacking.
Friends in Sydney have just had a massive unexpected hailstorm that’s damaged their roof and cars in the street, they say it’s one of the worst they can remember.
I’m in the Rockdale area and it was definitely the most intense storm that’s come through Sydney in a few years but it came and went very quick at least. BOM for some reason though issued like 10 billion warnings in 5 minutes instead of just doing 1 with all the info. They ended up having to cancel 2 of them. And DVB-T reception was the worse I’ve seen. 7 on my TV was stuck pixelating on a pandora ad for a while but the audio was still playing.
Some very loud lightning strikes were heard. We must have had a brief blackout. My modem reset itself and lights flashed off and on after the first and loudest lightning strike.
Judging from your posts, I’m assuming you live in the Bayside area too? And yes, there was one that went longer than the others and I think it hit a car or bus or something? My power didn’t go out, but the internet did for a bit but only NBN not 5G. Did go outside and there was a tiny flood bit nothing too bad.
Also check out the SST how much warmer than average they are… last season this warmth wasn’t this far south… looks 3 deg above average off the coast of Mackay.
For those wanting to keep a closer eye on cyclone activity this season see the below. We often get some early solid intel around -3 weeks out, some other data around the traps can extend for months out but I’ve only ever found those accurate for determining events as simple as large rain events over a certain period.
Long Range is showing heavy rainfall mid Jan to mid Feb in QLD so operations normal on that front.
Check back next Tuesday for the update around the Timor sea, looks likely to be our first potential event in Week 4.
The aurora australis could be visible from large areas of Australia on Wednesday night into Thursday morning as a severe geomagnetic storm disrupts Earth’s magnetic field.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Space Weather Service (SWS)issued an ‘aurora alert’ on Wednesday afternoon, an advisory that only gets issued when space weather activity that is favourable for viewing aurora is currently in progress.
“Given the strength of this storm, there’s a chance people farther north than typically expected in the southern hemisphere might be able to see it,” astronomer Dr Laura Driessen, from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy said, adding it could be visible to people in Sydney and Perth.
“Tasmania and New Zealand should get a decent view,” she said.
Wednesday night was “the best chance for people to go outside and try catch a glimpse of the aurora,” Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, said. “It looks like it’s going to be very high up the southern coast of Australia, so visible from parts of Victoria and New South Wales.”
I did hear though, that for those in NSW (or further north) you need to be out of the city away from all of the lights, wait until 11pm, and even then it might only be visible with a camera.
