Maleny Weather

I have often mentioned jet streams relative to north-west cloud bands. Well, jet streams are narrow currents of high-speed winds, typically thousands of kilometres long, hundreds of kilometres in width, and a few kilometres in depth, that occurs in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. They normally travel up to about 400 kph. The maximum speed recorded was 656 kph.

Commercial aircraft on trans-Australian flights make full use of the boost given by a jet stream whenever possible.

 The Japanese already knew about jet streams from their research on balloons before the Second World War. (This was well before our understanding of jet streams from satellite images). They planned on using jet streams to attack the North American Mainland with incendiary bombs attached to balloons and cause as much panic and confusion as possible. The idea was to set fire to the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

 They developed sophisticated high-altitude bomb-carrying balloons called Fugos, to be carried along in a jet stream. Of nine thousand Fugos launched, around one thousand reached America, from Alaska to Mexico, and as Far East as Michigan and Texas in the south-west.

 Although only six people were killed, the military authorities and FBI realized the panic this could trigger in the civilian population; and censored all media reports of the balloons.

 Special Fugo squads were set up across the country to clear up any evidence of the bombs and hush up eye-witnesses. They were called ‘smoke jumpers’, attached to the 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion and as a black battalion were the only all black airborne unit in the US Navy. Though highly trained and very capable, they were never allowed to fight in Europe. Instead, in 1945, they were sent to the west coast to deal with a little-known war tactic of balloon bombs. These incendiary bombs were set afloat into the jet stream in Japan, with the idea that they would land on the western US coast and ignite. Though not very successful at killing people, the bombs did cause forest fires. The Smoke Jumpers, in their three years of service, made a total of 1200 individual jumps into fires, with only one loss of life.

If the forests had not been wet from rain and snow the Fugos would have succeeded in setting them alight. And if, as the Americans feared, the Japanese added a biological germ or chemical warfare to the balloon’s arsenal the results would have been catastrophic. Ironically, the most successful Fugo attack brought down a power line to Hanford – the plutonium plant from which the atom bomb was being made.

Queensland’s first meteorologist appointed by the Government was truly an extraordinary person. At 32, he was tall and lean, restless with a mop of red hair and had bounding energy.
His name was Clement Wragge. Born in England in 1852 he spent some time at sea before joining the staff of the British Royal Meteorological Society. He made a name for himself when he was given the task of setting up and running a weather station on top of Ben Nevis, one of Britain’s highest mountains.
When in 1887, Clement Wragge accepted an offer of an appointment by Queensland Government; it rained incessantly for several weeks and resulted in him getting the nickname of ‘Inclement Wragge.
However, within a very short space of time he established 400 rain recording stations, including Maleny, and 100 synoptic weather stations, including Crowhamhurst Observatory, near Peachester, where Clement’s pupil and assistant, Inigo Jones set up the world famous centre for long range forecasting, based on weather cycles and sun spots.

Another first for Wragge was naming of tropical cyclones. After using the Greek alphabet, he turned to using names of Government politicians of the day, because he said both were ‘national disasters’. This didn’t go down well with the Government, and their objection resulted in the naming of cyclones discontinuing for many years only to be resumed by the Bureau of Meteorology in 1963.

Wragge thought he could break droughts by firing Steiger Canons at rain bearing clouds, as some success had been reported of similar experiments carried out in the Mediterranean vineyards regions. So he set up a ring of canons around Charleville and fired them all at the same time to create a tremor in the atmosphere. The experiment failed miserably. One of the Steiger canons is still place today and can be seen at Charleville.

HMS IMPLACABLE (ex Duguay-Trouin)

By Patrick Stacey

 Not many people know that a wooden walled battleship that fought in the Battle of Trafalgar was still afloat in 1949, some 144 years after the event.

 No!   Not Admiral Lord Nelson’s flag ship H.M.S. Victory, as she was already in dry dock and restored to her former glory.

 The ship I am referring to (and had a personal interest in) is a French 74-gun ‘man of war’ Duguay-Trouin. Built in Roquefort, France in 1801 she had a waterline length of 55m and breadth of 15m. Complement of 670 men

Under the command of Claude Touffet she survived the Battle of Trafalgar after causing severe damage to the British fleet. The French ship survived the Battle but 14 days later was sighted by Sir Richard’s Strachan fleet. In the ensuing engagement Claude Touffet and all his officers were killed.

 A prize crew was put on board the French ship and sailed back to England for a refit and then commissioned as H.M.S. Implacable. She saw service with the Mediterranean fleet until 1855 when she became a Royal Naval training ship.

 In the 1930” the Royal Navy gave permission for HMS Implacable to be used as a private training ship in Portsmouth Harbour for Merchant Service cadets

 After the war the old ‘man of war’ became too costly to maintain and on December 2^nd 1949 a tug took her in tow and she was scuttled off the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. The last ship afloat from the time of Trafalgar had been put to rest after 148 years.

From the Archives

    An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred at 3.23 am on Sunday 30^th September 2007 near the Aukland Islands and activated Australia’s first tsunami early warning buoy, sited on the ocean floor south of Tasmania. All coastal areas of Tasmania and New Zealand were alerted of a possible sea-level rise and flooding. The warning was cancelled early Monday morning when only minimal rise of sea-level occurred.

From the Archives

A dust storm occurred in the Melbourne area on Sunday 19^th December when The Tmes in London reported ‘a man riding his horse on the outskirts of Melbourne was unable to see the ears of his horse due to the streaming volume of hot, stinging dust’.