The bulk of it is headed for SEQ, Sunshine Coast and Gold coast down to just over the border. There hasn’t really been much said about it going as far down as Grafton. There’s rain forecast but I don’t think it’s as much as this.
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We are expected to drop to around 9-10 tonight. The mugginess has already cleared out, but at least when it was muggy we actually got some useful rain out of it which was badly needed.
I think everyone in Queensland and New South Wales should be given a voucher for a free summer holiday in Tassie, such is the constant threat of severe weather in summer. More golf ball sized hailstorms this week around the Southern Tablelands which damaged one of my friends’ cars.
Thankfully in Bungendore we escaped with only brief flash flooding on Monday, which didn’t affect my part of town.
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Bad night for the military tattoo at Suncorp!
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Looking nasty for those in the so called Sunshine State (we actually get much, much more sun in Bungendore). Such is life in the tropics.
Finally some nice calm (and not hot) weather forecast for the next 4-5 days here. Down to 12 in Braidwood mid afternoon today which was very refreshing.
Agree, it’s raining here and looking very misty outside… dew point has plunged to 16 degrees, very pleasant right now!
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I whinge when the DP is above 15 here, lol. But yes, 16 is good for the coast in February. As I say, February is for the frogs and frizzy hair. Used to dread February when living in Sydney (it’s January that’s the worst here, due to the rolling heatwaves and death ray sunshine). The Sun is actually losing some of its power now even in the middle of the day.
The worst storms usually occur in Jan and early Feb too, so hopefully we are past the worst of summer down here now. We’ll still get plenty of warm days but hopefully none approaching 40.
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Up here, I think the worst storms are usually Nov/Dec, but yes, February is usually the worst for humidity, January the worst for high temps…. but I think it’ll be another month here before we start to see temps/humidity to decline consistently.
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Yes, in northern NSW November and December is the storm peak as that is the nexus between cold upper air and high surface temperatures; this fuels deep instability. In SEQ the peak is even earlier (October/November) as cold uppers are basically non-existent in midsummer up that way. You’re more likely to get torrential rainfall only when uppers are warm, typical of tropical type thunderstorms.
Down here we have cool/cold upper air almost all summer so destructive hailstorms/microbursts/tornadoes are a threat all summer long. The strongest surface heating (hence instability) is from about Christmas to early/mid Feb so that’s when the storms are at their worst, the absolute peak has been around Christmas some summers and early Feb in others.
SE NSW probably sees just as many severe storm days as SEQ over the whole warm season, it’s just that the strongest storms usually occur over less populated areas. My friend was in such an area the other day (Charleys Forest) which has low population but gets frequently clobbered by supercells. I’d reckon some properties on the eastern fringes of the Southern Tablelands lose stuff to large hail every storm season.
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Yep, October is the month it all goes to hell here. The days are usually still OK for the most part, but that’s when the humidity kicks in (September is warm but not usually humid) and the storms. December and January the worst for heat and February not much better. It doesn’t get nice until April really, even March is just an extension of summer really.
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March is ‘summer lite’ down here, still generally warm to even hot by day but nights get progressively cooler by virtue of simple physics due to the longer nights. By the end of daylight saving the sun rises at the ridiculously tardy time of 0722; even now it’s not getting up till 0630 so the days take some time to warm up.
Due to the warm (but not OTT) temps, a lot of the ag shows down this way are in March. The Braidwood Show is the first Saturday in March so it can still be toasty…and it was last year, had to drink heaps of water sitting in the OB van!
On the coast March can be warmer than December due to the ocean’s greater effect on temperatures (even overnight). SSTs reach their zenith in late February and March; this is why cyclones also peak at this time. The hot ocean temps also account for the greater humidity in late summer compared to earlier in the season.
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Yeah, March is the last of the warm months in the cooler climates.
Random anecdote, but in a previous job I used to help survey cyclist movements on key corridors to get an idea of volumes etc for planning purposes. Even they divide them by location - the south of the country surveys this in early March while it’s still warm, the north surveys them in early September while it’s still cool. In the real tropics, they do it in July. They do this of course to try and measure peak volumes while the weather is (typically) ideal for cycling and even the fair-weather cyclists would be out.
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I wonder where that demarcation between the cool season cyclists and the warm season ones lay? I would say that even in Sydney, cycling is more comfortable in the cooler months, particularly since it’s generally drier.
Canberra is suitable for cycling year round due to a paucity of inclement weather; bad weather doesn’t tend to last long around here. Even in mid winter, cycling in the morning may be a tad uncomfortable…but then becomes ideal in the middle of the day. Flip this around for summer.
It’s very generalised, and yes, NSW/ACT is included with the cool state counts which is debatable.
I had some mates who did time at ANU and they loved cycling there, even with the negative morning temps in winter. Nothing like a bike ride on a brisk morning to warm you up - far more pleasant than riding in heat or humidity, for sure.
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Nice choice of words. Many people who live in Canberra feel imprisoned by the place, and go to the South Coast or Sydney every weekend 
I am one of the nutters who moved here (largely) by choice.
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Feeling like London Town in the Rivercity currently, light rain and grey clouds
Surprisingly cool last night too (for February at least), made a nice change from 37 and humid as hell the day before.
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Yes, I had two blankets on my bed last night no fan required! Got down to 18 degrees, coolest night for a while.
Going to be 21° tomorrow as our top. Expected to get a fair bit of rain then. It’s been on & off last couple hours tho. It’s 22° currently.
A fair bit of rain band sweeping from the west towards South East Queensland.
Would have been below 15 at Crookwell at lunchtime today, some people had fires going. Even in Bungendore we only made 19 and that was with some sun in the late afternoon (as usual, it’s rare to get cloud all day here). It would have been even chillier up towards Shooters Hill and east to the Blue Mountains; I struck drizzly rain at Taralga.
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A 300mm deluge was forecast – Brisbane got just 30mm
The embattled Bureau of Meteorology walked back its forecast of a weekend deluge exceeding 300mm for South East Queensland as it fizzled to as little as 30mm.
But not before local councils had activated sandbagging and evacuation centres in anticipation of major flooding.
The Bureau of Meteorology has blamed the speed of a coastal trough for the discrepancy between its forecast and the actual rainfall. Brisbane received just 30mm from Friday to Sunday.
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