Crikey it’s wet

[Jerry_Atrick]

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

Looking at the radar, it seems that the Great Divide is doing just that - dividing the flooded east from the dry west.

The Fohn Effect in action!

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

The Fohn Effect in action!

Well, the drier air is definitely warm. Warm in the sense that the temperature is around 20C during the day, which is warm for late May.

[red750]

[onetrack]

But fossil-fuelled vehicles are equally useless! So much for the anti-EV brigade rant. All the people drowned drove their fossil-fuelled vehicles into deep floodwaters.

EV's have the same fording depth ability as fossil-fuelled vehicles.

 

I was sitting on 120kmh in my diesel Hilux on the freeway yesterday, heading North to Muchea, when a Tesla came up behind me, going faster. He pulled up level with me for a minute, then took off in an acceleration spurt, that no fossil-fuelled vehicle could ever achieve. The HP ratings of some of the more powerful EV's put IC engines to shame.

 

In floods, there's not much use for any currency, either cash or electronic. You're just looking for food and drinkable water, and hopefully find some rescuer prepared to provide them for free. Money doesn't come into it when rescuing people from life-threatening disasters.

[facthunter]

 A flooded Service station is not much good  for a long time. Corded power tools are practically obsolete, now.  Electric is  coming.  Nev

[spacesailor]

In the west as on the outback farms , diesel tanks are elevated & don't need electricity.

so , you can get fuel if you have the  " money " .

credit is only for the wealthy that have an account .

spacesailor

[red750]

[facthunter]

It's really SA that's in severe drought, and Western NSW and north Western Victoria. Nev

[onetrack]

We actually got a little bit of rain in the Lower West over the last couple of days, but it never made it very far inland. In the City we got 11mm on Friday and another 17mm yesterday, up to 9:00AM this morning. But the Wheatbelt and even the Lower Great Southern didn't get anything worthwhile, a few mm at best in some of the coastal and near-coastal areas of the Lower Great Southern.

 

I had to take a drive to just out of Albany yesterday to deliver some items to a buyer. I was surprised at how dry the Great Southern was. Many crops struggling to get out of the ground due to insufficient moisture and it was only when I got down near Mount Barker (W.A.) that the country had a green tinge to it, and early crops (canola especially) were looking quite good.

 

The farmers must all be confident, the agricultural authorities are saying the area sown to crops this season in W.A. has increased by 2%, with an emphasis on canola sowings, and a pullback on the area sown to wheat and barley and oats. Canola has an advantage in dry start seasons, it will cope with a long dry spell better than wheat, which is surprising to me.

[red750]

A really weird sort of day today. Our maximum temperature was 10.5 at 6:00 am. By 8:00 am it had got to 8 deg and hovered around there the rest of the day. That's right, it got colder.  Later in the day bright sun was streaming in the window, but it was raining and the wind was freezing. Hail in some areas, and lots of snow in the ski fields.

 

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Our forecast is one degree from now 8 pm until tomorrow morning.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I have had to do something I haven't had to do for a long time.. water our outdoor pot plants.. One I think was too thirsty for too long; the others were looking wilty, but OK... I can't recall the last time I watered an outdoor pot plant - with no losses to pot plants yet. 

[onetrack]

Here on the Left Coast, we have had some Winter rain, but overall it's been much warmer for Winter than the average for this time of year. We are well down on annual rainfall, and the residual ground moisture levels are very low all through the State.

 

Winter crops such as Wheat and Canola are out of the ground and away, and got a boost with good rains last week, but they had a long dry spell in early June. Many crops seeded in May had spotty germination due to low moisture levels, and some farmers did spot re-seeding.

 

The crop areas that didn't germinate earlier are behind the rest of the crops. If we get reasonable rains in July, it may turn out to be an average cropping season, but I suspect it's going to turn out to be a spotty, below-average year for grain crops.

 

The high pressure systems are still dominating over Australia and the cold fronts and low pressure systems are still well South of the continent when they come through from the Indian and Southern Oceans to the West. Some of the rain we've had, originated from the Northern part of the Indian Ocean, and came in from the North West in troughs, rather than from cold fronts from the South West, as we'd normally expect in Winter.

 

Despite the warmer Winter, we're still going to head off to Broome for 12 days next month. Looking forward to a decent break, we haven't had one since before COVID started. We had two failed attempts at holidays in 2022 and 2023, both were cut short by COVID outbreaks, and we ended up locked up for a fortnight, both times.

 

Edited yesterday at 12:36 AM by onetrack

[facthunter]

I don't reckon Broome is what it used to be. It's nearly always warm though, Big tidal effect.  Isn't accommodation at a premium?   Good luck anyhow. Nev

[onetrack]

Nev, everything in Broome is at a premium during the Dry. We were lucky, we normally stay at the Habitat Resort, it's on 7 acres out near the Port and the accommodation units are self contained and nicely spread out, which is what we like. Because we've stayed there regularly for years, we got a discount calling them direct. But it's still $290 a night.

 

The main problem was we could only get 8 days straight at the Habitat, then it was fully booked from 20th July on. But we found a nice AirBnB on the Northern outskirts of town, so we scored the last 4 days at the AirBnB, so it's all good. Even got a good deal on car hire at Thrifty through our RAC WA card, 20% off the hire rate. I'm looking forward to the warmth and relaxation.

[old man emu]

Over the next couiple of days the WEweather Bureau says that the coast of NSW will cop a hammering from a dumbell of two Low pressure centres just off the coast. I looked at the expected rainfall areas oiver thoise two days and, as a ereult, I am considering doing a lot of laundry because it will be planty dry around my way.

[nomadpete]

Looks like you are stuck in a rain shadow.

 

I bet you are hoping for some climate change 😉