Maleny Weather

RUTH LAVERICK

With heavy rainfall in the early days of settlement we can only imagine what it must have been like in 1886 when the first Europeans Robert Laverick and his wife, Ruth and their children James and Lilly took over a selection in Maleny’s Baroon Pocket.   Ruth, from Central London was to spend two years before she saw another white woman, and told of how the Aborigines were frequent visitors to her bush home. Her husband, Robert, was a butcher in Cobb’s Camp (Wombye) and only walked home once a week over the Blackall Range from Wombye via the Hunchy Razorback and down, what was later to become Mill Hill Road, Montville. He would stay the night and walk back to Cobb’s Camp the next day

Possibly, Ruth encountered one of her greatest hardships when in the torrential rains of February 1893 while her husband was away working at Wombye she was trapped with her young children in their little home. All the food was gone and the vegetables were washed away. They faced starvation. Their faithful dog came to the rescue. He seemed to sense the need for food for Ruth and her children (and for himself). He left the house and not long after Ruth heard a lot of noise at the door. When she opened the door the dog chased a wallaby into the kitchen. Ruth killed the wallaby with a poker. She cooked the good eating part and the remainder she gave to the hungry dog. This food kept them going until the rain stopped.

An extensive high pressure system in the lower Tasman Sea with a ridge extending along the east coast is mainly responsible for drawing northerly maritime monsoonal rains down on to the ranges. Total rainfall for the week ending 3.00pm Sunday is 300.6 mm, with more to come.

Please go to ‘This Month’ page for more data                    *** Tank overflow

Perth Drought Broken

The Bureau of Meteorology recorded 0.2 of a millimetre of rain in Perth overnight, ending the city’s second longest dry spell in history.
Up until yesterday there had been 78 days without rain, only six days short of the record dry spell of the summer of 1974-75.
The rain comes just after Perth’s hottest January in 48 years with an average temperature of 33.5 degrees.
Perth is on track for its hottest summer ever, with the temperature since December averaging 32 degrees

The highest February rainfall ever recorded at Maleny was in 1893 with 2733 mm, or over 109 inches, well in excess of the average annual rainfall.  In three days over 1715 mm of rainfall was recorded at Mooloolah On the 3^rd the highest 24 hours rainfall in Queensland was recorded at Crohamhurst with 907 mm. It is said the Obi-Obi Creek rose to an enormous height, reaching a point in Maple Street above Coral Street, which would have been submerged.

It was during this tropical storm that Steamer SS Dicky was shipwrecked on a Caloundra beach, to be named after her. The ship sailed from Rockhampton and as it arrived to clear Caloundra Head it met lashing rain and cyclonic winds that sent the ship on her beam ends.  Captain James Beattie was force to beach the ship to avoid hitting the rocks off Moffat Beach. On 4^th February 1893 at 10.35 am the ship grounded stern first on the beach, where her ribs and keel until quite recently were a tourist attraction.

The tropical storm continued the following day when the northern half of Indooroopilly Rail Bridge was washed away and part of the Victoria Bridge, spanning the Brisbane River, collapsed

 For the first time in 117 years there were 19 consecutive rain-free days in January, breaking the previous record held in January 1939 with 15 days. The dry spell was finally broken with a thunderstorm at 6.00pm on Friday 29^th when the parched ground was moistened with 8.2mm of precipitation.  Total rainfall for January was 154.6mm, representing 132.2mm below average for Maleny.  The monsoonal belt drifted south, and ex-TC Olga moved down the Queensland Coast as a rain depression, giving some moderate falls of rain to our region. In the 24 hours to 9.00am on Monday 1^st February the MWS recorded 105.0 mm. The maximum storm rain-rate was 164.6mm/hour at 3.30pm on Saturday 30^th

At 6.15pm on Monday 18 a change swept through the region, winds veered southerly, the barometer took a steep dive to 1000hPa, and conditions became ripe for a severe thunderstorm.  Although thunderstorms developed to the northwest of us and cumulonimbus clouds were overhead no rain was recorded at MWS.  Sixteen consecutive days have now elapsed since we have had more than 0.2mm splatter of rain. This matches January 1939, when the last time Maleny recorded a sixteen day dry spell.  Weatherwatchers are keeping vigil on ex-cyclones Neville and Olga, and if one or other travels down the east coast as a rain depression, it could mean a wet and windy end of the month.  Also, full moon will be at its closest perigee of the year bringing exceptionally high king tides and this together with heavy rainfall could cause flooding to some low-lying areas.

Please go to ‘This Month’ page for more data

Three more Egyptians died in flooding in the southern Sinai Desert, bringing the toll for three days of unseasonably heavy rains to 10. The arid region is unused to heavy rains which cause flash floods that can destroy homes and carry off livestock. Heavy wind and rains swept through parts of Egypt, Israel and Jordan on Monday, sweeping away homes, knocking out power lines and cutting roads. One motorist died in Israel and 10 died in Egypt, including a British tourist whose boat capsized as he was sailing along the Nile in southern Egypt

It is hard to imagine that only 150 years ago the Sunshine Coast was a land without roads and the inhabitants lived in a world without wheels.

In 1859, when the new state of Queensland was separated from New South Wales, the road north from Brisbane was extended and made good but only as far as Caboolture. Then when gold was discovered at Gympie in 1867, there was some sort of road from Caboolture to Gympie but this was often impassable in inclement weather due to deep mud. It was said the ‘road’ was often a quagmire, especially between Caboolture and Glass House Mountains. Wheels of drays were often buried to the axle in mud for a hundred yards at a stretch.

The first Cobb and Co coach from Brisbane to Gympie took place on November 12/13, 1868. The coach changed horses, about 10 times, consequently a good many horses and fodder were needed at the various stages of the journey.

Damage to the road was made worse by wheels of drays and coaches, and this prompted Caboolture Divisional Board to enforce a wheel tax to help with the  cost of road upkeep. A narrow three-inch tyre was taxed three times as much as a six-inch tyre, on the grounds that a narrow tyre cut the roads about more than the wider six-inch tyre. The cost of a licence for three-inch wheel was 17/6 per year. However, in some years due to drought and other hardships the tax was suspended. This happened in 1896, when the wheel tax collected in 1895 was refunded, and collection for 1896 suspended altogether.

Never-the-less, the idea of a vehicle licence was born and today we have the all too familiar and expensive ‘Rego’ allowing us to use Queensland roads.

On 24^th January 1974, a rain depression associated with ex-TC Wanda, caused torrential rain to fall during the last week of the month bringing the month’s rainfall at Maleny to a total of 1534 mm, five times in excess of the average and an all time record for the month. Falling as it did on the Stanley River catchments area near Maleny it contributed in no small way to the Brisbane Flood.

Flooding commenced of the Upper Stanley River on Friday 25th January and by Saturday the 26th, major flooding was also occurring in the Bremer and Upper Brisbane Rivers and the Lockyer Creek. The Brisbane River peaked in the city early on 29th January to become the city’s worst disaster this century

Twelve people were drowned in the Brisbane – Ipswich area; this figure is relatively low considering the extent of the flood and pays great tribute to the effectiveness of all emergency services.

Some 7000 houses were flooded in the Brisbane metropolitan area, many were washed away and others badly damaged by subsidence and landslides. In nearby Ipswich a further 1800 homes and commercial premises were inundated. The total damage was estimated at more than $200 million.

Eight days have passed since we had a good spell of rain. The 100 mm or so we had then failed to penetrate very deeply into the hard dry ground and we now need some continuous precipitation to combat the high evaporation rate we have at this time of year. The week’s weather pattern was slow moving with very little change in the synoptic situation. The monsoonal trough line drifted a little north, and one of its weak lows in the Gulf has a potential to become a tropical cyclone. Our hottest day of the week was on Sunday with 31.2°C at 1.30pm, recording a THSW Heat Stress factor of 39.8°C.

World weather news has been overshadowed by the devastating tragic loss of hundreds of thousand lives in the Haiti earthquake.

Please go to ‘This Month’ page for more data