Discussion: Sydney's Weather

[rainfan]

Nice one ATO2 . Graphics looks better, puts ours to shame .

[rainfan]

(Courtesy of the Daily Telegraph) - Stunning picture of yesterday's afternoon storm (quite an unusual occurence for August as our storm season doesn't normally start until around late September/October).

Story accompanying the photo:

IT looked like a scene from The War of the Worlds or Independence Day - a huge thunderhead which came as quickly as it went over our city yesterday.
As this magnificent photograph shows, it looked like the world was about to end when a sunny winter day, with top temperatures of 19C, took a startling turn around 2.30pm. (Actually it wasnt 19oC - it was 16oC & it wasnt exactly "sunny" as there was cloudy periods in the morning - just another example of gross exaggeration by the media )

The dark clouds over the city led to sudden bursts of heavy rain and hail.

Hail fell in Sydney's Macquarie Park and Chatswood areas.
Hail also fell in Mount Ousley and Balgownie in the Illawarra, at Nowra on the South Coast and Mt Riverview in the Lower Blue Mountains.
The cold front brought unexpected snow to Orange, Bathurst, Katoomba and in Crookwell, north of Goulburn.
More snow was predicted overnight as temperatures were forecast to fall further.
The Weather Bureau's senior forecaster Chris Webb said it was unusual for Orange to have so much snow during the day - but said temperatures had dropped from 6C in the morning to 0C by midday.
"There's been quite a good dump of snow in Orange. It's quite an unusual event to have a decent dump of snow in the middle of the day there," Mr Webb said.
He said the cold weather in the Central Tablelands was caused by an upper level cold pool.
"The cold front is the feature that's caused the snow so far," Mr Webb said.
Greentrees Guest House owner Jasmin Bond said it looked beautiful: "It looks like icing sugar in fairyland. Geez it was cold."
Rob Thornton, who runs The Mountain Teahouse 400m below the summit of Mt Canobolas, said it snowed from 11am to 1pm, then started raining.
"One fellow said the flakes were the biggest he'd seen in 23 years living in Orange. They were huge, about 3cm across. If the rain hadn't washed it all away we probably would have had about 6cm. I must say it looked absolutely magnificent," he said.
Snow also fell in the Alpine areas, with temperatures dropping to -2C in Thredbo. Mr Webb said the snow would ease over the next couple of days but more is forecast on Sunday.
As the snow and hail fell, so did temperatures, with 16C in Nowra dropping to 6C by 4pm. Temperatures in Homebush fell from 19C at 2pm to 11C at 3pm, while the Sydney metropolitan area experienced a cool dip in the mercury, with temperatures falling from 15C to 11C by 3pm. Bringelly and Nowra received 14mm of rain, Chatswood 11mm.
Although the storm passed out to sea late yesterday, more heavy showers are expected early today before clearing by the afternoon.
Mr Webb said the hailstones were about the size of the balls used to fill bean bags and were too small to do any damage, even though in some areas the hail storm lasted 20 minutes.
The hail, which fell about 7cm deep in Mount Ousley, covered houses, lawns and roads on the South Coast, with drivers forced to reduce speed in dangerous conditions.

[rainfan]

Cold early with fresh gusts at times. Overcast morning with some early showers, mainly cloudy afternoon with some sun at times with fresh to strong cool southwesterlies. Low of 8 & top of 18 for the city & airport.

Rain to 9am today:
City: 4.6mm
Airport: 2.4mm
Rose Bay: 3.6mm
Highest daily fall: 13mm at Bringelly (SW)

Still below average temps, in fact many places are experiencing thier coldest starts to August in several years... max of 15 expected for Sun. & 16 for Mon & Tues with mins of 6 - 7 degrees with cold, icy SW winds blowing. I must admit a few nights of 19, 20 21 degrees & NE-NW winds (as is the norm during summer) would be nice right now

[ATO2]

Crikey! Looks like the start of Godzilla meets Batman!
Dramatic shot for sure!

[rainfan]

After a quite cold night - clear & sunny until the afternoon when cloudy at times periods developed. Cold with light to moderate W winds which has increased to fresh/strong in the last hour or so. Max of 17 in city & airport. Expected to be quite windy tomorrow with 15oC.

[windy]

victoria seems to be getting regulary lows/fronts lately....must be helping the drought affected inland areas?

[rainfan]

Very changeable weather today!. Started off sunny & clear for about 2 hours then frontal cloud swept in around midday with few light showers then cleared, clouded over an hour later with off-shore showers then cleared once again towards sunset. Went to Bondi Beach this morning to watch the City to Surf runners (On a very sad note a 26 year old man collapsed & passed away around 200 metres from the finish line ), it was very cold as the minimum dropped to 6 degrees in the city (5 at the airport, -1.9 at Badgerys Creek, -1.7 at Campbelltown, -0 at Holdsworthy and zero at Bankstown & Richmond). Luckily winds were calm for a while but increased to moderate W during the day becoming strong to gusty icy SW around sunset, has eased to moderate now but it's very chilly, atm 8oC in the city. Max of 15 in the city & 16 at airport. Max gust at airport was 61km/hr.

The cold snap is set to continue well into next week with more below average temps & cold dry winds from the SW-W. People are starting to complain a lot now about the "neverending" cold temps & incessant cold. dry winds with references to "Oh global warming my foot" or "so much for predictations of hotter weather" etc. I just stay out of those conversations , someone tried to engage me further, I said "If you want to get into a permanent merry-go-around debate about GW, CC etc - go to a weather forum, you'll find plenty of people "debating" about that sort of thing; just make sure you have a spot where you can jump off should the spinning get too much" Well honestly some people

[rainfan]

Originally Posted by windy

victoria seems to be getting regulary lows/fronts lately....must be helping the drought affected inland areas?

There’s been some good rain in parts of the state especially the southern half, but according to Victorians – while it’s good, much more is needed. Some Victorians are even declaring the current weather a fizzer - they should be thankful to get any rain at all, more to come judging by the rain radar.
SA has done very well more so than Vic, Adelaide has recorded rain every day of this month so far (53mm which is around average).
Perth on the other hand is not doing so good - no rain forecast over next 2 weeks & this in what's normally one of their wettest months on average, certain people are complaining about the sunshine coupled with cold nights including a comment of "It's bad enough to have this occurring on top of the dry summers".

[RWood]

This is a pessimistic comment on the Vic. (Ferny Creek) situation from an Aust. forum:

Hate to say it but I reckon August is going to be our 8th below average month in a row. Its 25% over and we've had just 10mm against an average of ~120mm.

We are just not getting any decent single day falls - we haven't cracked 20mm for a day for 3 months, when usually we would get a couple a month (if not more). Have been out and about the in country southern Vic the last week and while things are green the creeks and rivers are right down - indeed looking more like summer than winter.

On the other hand the poster (a met scientist) is quite pleased about a system over Vic. at present, from a rain and snow viewpoint.

[rainfan]

Sunny & clear morning, cloudy at times afternoon with a light shower. Cold with low of 7 and high of 15 with fresh to gusty icy SW-W winds.

It was a very cold day further west, Orange had a max of only 2oC (coldest August day since 1986) & 7 degrees at Parkes (coldest August day in at least 45 years).