Weather

You know you’ve officially become a Sydneysider when you become obsessed with “The Southerly”. When’s it due? Why hasn’t it got here yet? It’s reached the airport - bloody-well hurry up.

In Sydney, having the Bureau of Meteorology as your homepage is not considered weird.

We’ve been bitching and moaning for months about how wet it is, how cold it is, how we wanted to spend Christmas at the beach but it raaaaiiined. Then yesterday in Sydney we had our first day over 30 degrees for the summer, and last night it didn’t get down below 25.5 degrees at Observatory Hill. You’d think this event would be welcomed with wild celebrations yes? Not in Sydney. Today we’re all soooo tiiiirrred because none of us could sleep properly.

Continue reading "Sydney people are such sooks about the weather" »

A few talkers for the start of the working week.

1) If you live in Sydney or Brisbane: how great is this weather? If you live in Melbourne or Adelaide: I hope you’ve got the AC on, a bottle of water next to you and a personal servant to handfeed you grapes, because I hear it’s scorching. Suckers.

2) If Seinfeld had been on air in the early eighties, you’d bet the press would’ve been calling Queensland’s state government the Seinfeld administration if this story had came to light a little earlier: The Bjelke-Petersen cabinet spent time discussing whether toilet doors should uniformly swing inwards or outwards, some recently released records show.

Personally, I’m agnostic when it comes to this contentious debate. I just wish somebody would fix the second cubicle door in The Punch’s male bathroom. The lock has been broken for months and the door won’t stay shut! Bah humbug.

3) Please welcome back to The Punch the exceptionally talented Tory Maguire. A longtime newswoman, Tory has rejoined the team after some time off taking care of her young bub.

Continue reading "Punch on: Open thread 03/01/2011" »

I freely admit that in the past few years I’ve remained unable to acclimatise properly to this beautiful country’s extremes, occasionally moaning either about the heat or the cold—when back home I’d break out the deckchair and whack a hanky on my head the minute the clouds broke.

At present we’re at the start of an Australian winter. For me, that should rightly be like an English summer. And while there are some truly gorgeous days cropping up now and then, you just can’t tell how it’s going to pan out.

My main beef is with the wind chill factor. Or lack of it. That’s right, people who report the weather, I said wind. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s out there, even now, blowing shit around.

Continue reading "ICB: Hey weatherman, just tell me if I need a jacket!" »

I have lived in Tully and Innisfail and survived cyclones when I resided there. I was evacuated in the recent Brisbane floods for five days but fortunately the water surrounding my house stopped just before it entered. I am currently in North America and been bombarded with weather warnings about the “Snow storm of the century”

I admit that during the time that Cyclone Yasi was crossing the North Queensland coast I was listening to ABC radio here in North America on the internet as I was concerned for the welfare of friends and relatives living there.

The aim of a severe weather warning is to prevent a weather hazard from becoming a disaster. I am amazed however at the national extent of the weather hysteria devoted by the media and politicians both here and in Australia when accurate and credible warnings for potentially affected areas are all that are required.

Continue reading "How much weather porn can we watch?" »

``Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you,’’ goes the much loved Crowded House song.

But if you’re in politics, it’s more often the weather which takes you and its colossal force can sweep you away.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott should remember this because climate and climate related politics have shaped many a political turn over the years.

Continue reading "When the weather can change the political climate" »

Returning home for summer is a continuing novelty for me. This may be explained in part by the fact the Melburnian summer exists only in myth, much like the unicorn or Dennis Lillee.

Compared to the glorious and endless parade of 35-degree days in Perth, the southern capital is a pale and moody slouch.  Yes, it may be the cultural, sporting, and nightlife epicentre of the nation, but not even Events Victoria could poach a decent summer.

Rain outside of winter does not make for happy tidings. As Thom Yorke croaked: “everything in its right place”. And that means, Melbourne, keep the damp in July and open up the summer goody bag sometime around December.

Continue reading "The real city rivalry: Melbourne v Perth" »

Everyone loves to bag the weatherman. But the cold, hard truth of the matter is that weather forecasts have become extremely reliable. It’s everyone else who gets it wrong.

By “everyone else” I mean both the general public and the media. As messengers, the media often over-simplify the bureau’s raw data to the point of abstraction, while the public takes the game of Chinese Whispers a step further, wildly misinterpreting the media’s already-distorted forecasts.

It happens every day. A forecast that says “slight chance of a shower” becomes an umbrella icon on a ditzy weather presenter’s weather chart, which the public then read as a certain deluge.

Continue reading "Don’t blame the Weather Bureau for dud forecasts" »

More extremely hot days fewer cold ones; wetter in the north and drier in the south of the country; sea levels higher around the country: this is not a forecast for Australia’s climate but a snapshot of the changes to our climate now.

The thousands of scientists working for both the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have been studying and observing the many changes underway to our climate and, as a result, our weather for a number of years now.

Who hasn’t wondered recently what is going on with the weather?

Continue reading "Nation’s top scientists agree: the climate is changing now" »

August 2009 was Australia’s warmest on record. Temperatures averaged over the country were 2.47C above the long-term average, nearly a degree above the previous August record set in 1998, and 25% of the country had its hottest August day on record at some stage during the month.

Some places, such as Collarenebri and Murwillumbah in NSW and Gatton in Queensland, broke their previous August records by 5C or more. Temperatures reached as high as 37.8C at Mungindi in NSW and 38.5C at Bedourie in Queensland, both of which were all-time state records for August.

Such an exceptional month leads to many people to ask: is this climate change?

Continue reading "Record heat and climate change: what’s going on?" »

It’s “proof” to climate change believers, “just weather” to sceptics – but to everyone it’s the arrival of summer. In winter.

View The Punch - August weather in a larger map

Weather records are often trivial matters, a question of a few tenths of some obscure measurement here and there. Last month’s heat highs streaked away from the norms like Usain Bolt taking on a field of suburban club runners.

Unless you work for Channel 10, weather people typically aren’t an excitable bunch. But the Bureau of Meteorology is calling the August heat “highly unusual” and “exceptional”, and this week issued a Special Climate Statement, its first since the heatwave that fried the southeast in February. The interactive map above shows some – just some – of the dozens of records around the country that were burnt.

Continue reading "Interactive map: Australia’s scorching August" »

As I write this piece, news has just filtered through that Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding has been found alive on Mt Feathertop, in the Victorian Alps. Thank God.

I don’t yet know many details of his bungled trip, but I do know this: Holding is just the latest in a series of backcountry adventurers who’ve failed to pay the Australian Alps the respect they deserve.

For nine months of the year, the Australian Alps are a benign bunch of hillocks which are scarcely fit to be called mountains. Our highest peak, 2228m Mt Kosciuszko, is so rounded that tourist buses were once permitted to drive all the way to the summit.

Continue reading "It’s time we respected the Australian Alps" »

I had to check that the date on the paper wasn’t April 1. Under the headline “Tanfastic – Time to strip off as spring hots up” readers were breathlessly warned that: “Sun-seekers should gear up for the hottest day of the year today as temperatures reach a balmy 22 degrees.

“The unrivalled hot weather – 76 degrees Fahrenheit – follows a mixed Easter weekend of blue skies dotted with showers.”

I can’t now recall whether the temperature reached the “balmy” heights of 22 on that April day but the story marked the beginning of the annual season for predicting that Britain will have a scorching summer.

Since then people have been warned to expect to “swelter” during a “blistering” summer.

Continue reading "Postcard from London: Get set for a “scorching” 22C" »