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29-7-10, Thursday 11am: This latest news article from Weatherzone is interesting (The ABC is the story source) and slightly better than the similar SMH one, in my opinion. There is no doubt the world has warmed and has continued to warm. Climatology is not where I spend most of my 'weather time' so I will leave it to the article below to describe the situation. On a personal level, I am curious to see if the significant solar minimum we had in 2008 and 2009 will impact on our weather/climate by later this year and into next year.
I don't have strong views on what is causing the warming of the world climate, I am aware of the theories but my opinions are not strongly and thoroughly researched due to time constraints. I am starting to wonder though, just how much of this climate change may be caused by humans. The next decade will show us pretty clearly what is happening, IMO. In the mean-time, its highly important that we should look after this precious earth, no matter what the causes of the warming are. Live as simply as we can is my approach.
Read about it the above-mentioned article here.
22-7-10, Thursday 9am: Its been a benign winter for fronts again this year, even worse than last year so far. From my records, since the 1950s, it appears that we have not had two very bad years in a row like this. It could change in August/September though, lets hope. We had 66.2mm of rain from my gauge for June and so far in July, we have had just over 30mm.
4-6-10, Friday 10am: This current surface trough on the coast has given my home office gauge a total of 45.5mm so far this month. A very nice start to June. The Blue Mountains tends to benefit more from these events than areas further west. So it can feel quite cool here, like a typical winter but in reality there is still a lack of classical fronts from the SW, so no snow yet or the typical frosty mornings we are used to. I feel sorry for the ski fields, this type of weather pattern, whilst chilly for us, does nothing for their ski season.
4-6-10, Friday 9am: 67.8mm from my gauge for May, which is a great recovery after so little rain for most of the month. That result is better than the short term average from the Mt Boyce Station (53.3mm) but Katoomba's May 2010 total of 79.6mm was well below the long term average of 101.5mm. Just a reminder for weather data enthusiasts out there, if you are taking your readings from the Mount Boyce AWS and then deriving your averages from that, it wont be completely accurate. The publicly available Mt Boyce data only gives the temperatures on the hour (sometimes per half hour) so you are possibly not getting the coldest or warmest temp outside that time.
27-5-10, Thursday 7am: 33.5mm from 9am yesterday to 7am today from my gauge and that should pretty much be the end of this system apart from a few lighter showers. A very good result. 53.8mm is now my total thus far for May, a great improvement on recent weather patterns for sure. A brief respite today of sorts then we will move back into another system for the weekend that could be just as strong. It will all depend on how and where the surface low/trough develops and what sort of upper cold pool occurs.
26-5-10, Wednesday 4pm: Well, nature has finally given us a burst of wild weather today! A nice, tight little low/trough in the Tasman is generating plenty of shower activity for the city basin and also the Blue Mountains. Check out the radar and satellite imagery for some nice action. This activity should ease by tomorrow but not before dumping down more rain tonight. If you want to check out the best web cam in Sydney tonight, have a look at the State of Origin league match on Channel Nine, they could be playing in a pool by 8pm...
12-5-10, Wedneday 5pm: Thanks for the regular flow of emails I get from all of the colder climate lovers out there, its always nice to hear from you. There are people from all walks of life that send messages through and each one of them is valuable and interesting to me. Take heart weather lovers as I think the weather is about to break soon. The BoM has now declared the ElNino officially over! That in itself is a good sign and computer forecast modelling is now showing a dynamic pattern that could potentially develop over coming weeks. No certainty yet at all but the potential is there. Fingers crossed for some wild and woolly weather soon.
22-4-10, Thursday, midday: Have a look at these images from Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. Simply stunning. Its unlikely that any ash from this eruption will cool the southern hemisphere climate like Mt Pinatubo did briefly in the 1990s.
20-4-10, Tuesday 6pm: Its approaching the time when cool/cold changes start to effect the SE of Australia. Anzac day is typically the turning point for me, when I start to look for better and stronger cold fronts coming our way. This is just a guide of course but its the time of year when patterns generally start to become more wintery, if not completely wintery just yet. The indicators this year for winter are looking pretty good but of course, that's all they are really. Nature will do as she pleases, as we know. Statistically, it would be hard to have another shocker of a winter like the one we had last year so fingers crossed for this year.
There are a number of encouraing signs for this winter but I wont make too many comments just yet as its still very early days. We could see a windy, cool change by around Sunday but as usual in autumn, the models are chopping and changing a fair bit. Its nice to see those frontal systems getting organised in the southern ocean.
10-4-10, Saturday 8pm: The Oberon Plateau and areas nearby (Bathurst/Orange etc) could be in for their first frosts of the season by around Tuesday and they could continue for a couple of days or more. Blackheath and other upper mountains towns above around 1000M could also see frosts although our minimums wont be quite as low as the other areas mentioned. Contrary to what is sometimes believed, the Blue Mountains is not generally a heavy frost area due to most towns/villages being settled on the ridge-line. We still get plenty of light frosts in winter but not often to the extent of the heavy frosts in places like Oberon, Bathurst and places like Crookwell and even Armidale, Walcha and Guyra etc. You can see incredible frosts in these areas, sometimes leaving reedy grass and trees covered in ice around a cm thick.
Have a look at this 2008 ice photo from the northern tablelands, an area that can be much more prone to ice than the Blue Mountains. This one is also a ripper.
6-4-10, Tuesday 8:30am: After 49.1mm from my gauge at the end of March (94.2mm was my March total) we are now due for our next burst of wet weather with an approaching trough. Its always hard to say exactly how much will fall over your house in Blackheath but I would rate it a 60% chance of shower activity this afternoon/evening and into tomorrow. Falls could be moderately heavy if convective activity focuses on our area. Satellite imagery and radar loops will provide the details later today. You can already see the instability just to our NW on IR sat loop.
29-3-10, Monday 8:45am: Well, its been a quiet three weeks on the weather front in Blackheath with only 8mm in that time from my gauge. We are running well below the March average (33.6mm has fallen so far, officially) but that should change slightly over coming days just before the month ends. As I type, there is nice shower activity moving in and we should see more tomorrow.
7-3-10, Sunday 3pm: 318.7mm fell in February from my gauge and most of that occured in the first week of the month although there was some handy shower activity later in the month. 212.1mm fell in January so that is a total of 530.8mm in the first two months of the year. Using the longer term figures from the Katoomba obs station, the average maximum temp for this February came in at 22.7C (0.3C above the long term average) and the monthly average minimum came in at 14.8C, which is 2C above the long term average. Rainfall for this month so far from my Blackheath gauge is 27mm with more falling as I speak.
11-2-10, Thursday 8am: A quite strong system looks to be developing by around Saturday. Just how strong and how wet it will be should be clearer by tonights models. Ahead of that potential, we have a moderately good prospect of storms for today and tomorrow.
8-2-10, Monday 1pm: Another 39.7mm to 9am today, a little more than I expected actually. That takes our total so far for February to 284.6mm. Some light drizzle has fallen since 9am but not a lot.
7-2-10, Sunday 4:30pm: Another 25.4mm in my gauge from 9am yesterday to 9am today which takes the February monthly total so far, to 244.9mm. Add that to the 212.1mm in January and we have had 457mm this year. We have had another few mm since 9am but nothing like the intensity of recent days, although it does look like we could get some more reasonable totals overnight.
6-2-10, Saturday 1pm: From 9am yesterday to 9am today, we had another 71.5mm. 219.5mm has now fallen in my gauge since the beginning of February, very impressive indeed but certainly not record breaking. The total for the year is now up to 431mm from my gauge. These showers should slowly ease over the weekend but there could still be moderate to heavy showers today. It could still be unstable tomorrow but the intensity of shower activity should be less in our region. No beautiful sunshine days just yet although Tuesday looks okay at present.
4-2-10, Thursday 8am: 212.1mm was my monthy rainfall reading for January and that rain has certainly continued into February with some heavy showers over the first few days of the month. From 9am yesterday to 8am today, we have had 57.5mm. The total since the beginning of February is now 108.5mm and rising.
28-1-10, Thursday midday: Plenty of storms passed over Blackheath yesterday, I counted eight storms from 3:30pm to 10pm. The first one had hail to 1.5cm that lightly covered the ground and the sixth storm at around 7pm was the most lightning active with some intense cloud to ground strikes nearby. We had a blackout from around 4pm to 7pm and curiously Integral Energy did not know about the blackout when I rang them at 5pm. I would have thought they had a mechanism in their system to detect outages?
27.3mm was the 24 hour reading to 9am this morning from my gauge in SE Blackheath. Let me know if your reading was much different as rainfall rates vary a lot during storms. Standard rain gauges are the best and most accurate approach and Bunnings still sells them, I think. Ask for the Nylex 1000. There is a significant chance of storms later today and a slight to moderate chance that they could also be severe, ie: hail 2cm or larger, winds over 90kph and flash flooding. Stay safe this arvo!
16-1-10, Saturday 6pm: From just after 1pm today Blackheath experienced one of its heaviest thunderstorms in the last decade or more. In the first hour we had 90.7mm, which is a very rare experience for us. Usually storms weaken a little as they move over the Oberon Plateau but not this one. From 1:10pm to 2:35pm I recorded 104mm in total, which is what the BoM reported on their severe weather page after I reported the storm to them earlier today. My house may have been directly under the storm core as Mt Boyce AWS didn't record as much rainfall as I did. There was also lots of lightning which resulted in a blackout for about two hours, starting at about 2pm. Please let me know how much rain you recorded as it would be interesting to know of the varying amounts under this storm. Be sure to check out the Bridal Veil Falls YouTube video I have set up on the photos page, its quite amazing. Has anyone got photos or videos of the falls being heavier than this?
Here are the radar images from around 1pm and 2pm, you can see in the first
image that the initial storm is very focussed on SE Blackheath (over my area)
and Mt Boyce AWS misses out. Then in the second image, further storms are also
occuring over Mt Boyce AWS, just 2 kilometres to the north. This shows well just
how isolated storms can be and also how perfectly positioned these storms were
to flow into Bridal Veil Falls.
Radar
- 16-1-10 - 1pm - click here
Radar
- 16-1-10 - 2pm - click here
Total rainfall for the 24 hours to 9am Sunday morning was 113.5mm. This was more than the whole month of December! It wont be official though as Mt Boyce is the official gauge for this area and it totalled much less.
PS: Just got an email from some folk that were near the bottom of the falls during this flash flood, quite amazing they didn't drown: 'Gee it looks good from the top...spare a thought for myself and my two colleagues, we were at the bottom near the signpost junction to Evens look out sitting down having a break.. It was like someone flushed the toilet and you were in it. The river rose 4 metres and we were lucky to not get washed away. Pretty scary. Didn't see any signs re flash floods. Just not our time yet. We had to wait 1 hour for river to subside for us to cross. Kokoda Buddies.'
3-1-10, Sunday 7:30pm: December came in with 102.5mm from my gauge which is about 30mm above the fourteen year average of Mt Boyce AWS. The official recording for the month from Mt Boyce was 93.4mm. Variations like this are normal due to the scattered nature of summer showers. Average minimum temps came in at 12.2C which is 0.7C above the fourteen year average at Mt Boyce. Average maximum temps came in at 24C, which is 1.4C above the fourteen year average at Mt Boyce. Monthly minimum and maximum averages at Katoomba were 12.5C and 23.9C, which is 0.9C and 1.5C above, respectively. So a pretty warm December and a fairly wet one as well.
Its been quite drizzly and grey so far in January too although rainfall totals have been fairly low thus far. I think there has only been one mainly sunny day since Christmas so a bit more sun would be nice. Tomorrow and Tuesday should be less cloudy and rainy than our recent weather pattern. Happy new year to all weather lovers.