Maleny Weather

WOW !   What a scorcher it was on Monday 9th. With a humidity of 46% and a steep fall in barometric pressure the afternoon’s temperature soared to a maximum of 35°C by 3.00pm. The Heat Stress factor recording was 46°C.  Not since 21^st January 2000 has there been such a high temperature in January. The cause of Monday’s abnormal temperature was a high in the northern Tasman Sea bringing a stream of hot air to the Ranges.

The dry spell that started at the end of last month continued on until the middle of January. The end came with a change in synoptic weather conditions as an east coast low of 1004hPa developed off the central Queensland coast. Over the next few days the low, together with an upper level system, brought substantial rainfall to the Maleny catchment plateau for the Mary, Stanley, Mooloolah and Maroochy Rivers. Flash flooding occurred in some areas

 Most of the heaviest rain precipitated from Nimbostratus cloud in the upper level system  whereas isolated showers were from surface maritime Stratocumulus clouds that came over the coast on an onshore air stream to the Ranges.

The heaviest 24- hour rainfall was on 25^th when 135mm was recorded. Last year, in a strong La Nina year, the 24-hour figure was 282mm. It was in 1974, at the time of Brisbane’s big flood Maleny recorded the highest ‘all time’ one-day record with 552mm.   Total rainfall for this month is 536.4mm, compared with January last year when 902.8mm was recorded.  The 119 year average for Maleny in January is 292mm.

Baroon Pocket dam is 103% full and is closed for water related recreation.

It was very muggy throughout the rain spell with the Relative Humidity percentage in the upper 90’s on many days.  [Mould is a problem in many households]. However, the mean RH in morning and mean in afternoon were 85% and 75% respectively.  Both within the norm figure, due to the dry first half of the month.

The mean maximum temperature for the month is 18.4°C, representing 1.3 degrees below the norm. However, the mean minimum is only slightly below average.

Not surprisingly, the Bright Sunshine hours recorded this month are exactly double the 76 hours recorded in January last year.

 The Bureau of Meteorology has released its Annual Climate Statement for 2011, highlighting a year likely to go down as the third wettest on record. Last year’s weather was dominated by two La Niña events. The first, one of the strongest in recorded history, began in 2010 and continued into the autumn of 2011. The second, weaker event, formed toward the end of winter.

Welcome to 2012, Weather Fans!

If weather is your thing, and wild, weird weather is even more your thing, then 2011 must have left you happy as a clam.. You must have been very busy keeping track of the rash of tornadoes, floods, fires, droughts, high highs and low lows that inspired climatologist Bill Patzert to call it “global weirding.”

It started out with the news that scientists had created 52 rain storms in the Abu Dhabi desert in 2010, and it just got weirder from there.  In the UK, the two-spring, no-summer year fascinating, but poor wildlife found it plain confusing. Animals all over the world suffered through the weird weather of 2011, with mass animal deaths making the news several times in 2011. (Remember when thousands of birds dropped dead from the sky in Arkansas, Louisiana and Sweden, millions of dead fish washed up in Chesapeake Bay and Brazil, and hundreds of dead crabs turned up in England?)

Meteorologists have offered scientific explanations for the weird weather that mostly point to La Niña and the North Atlantic Oscillation and to the Arctic Oscillation, but they are don’t all agree on the extent to which global warming is to blame.

They all agree, sadly, that we need to prepare for more weird weather. In an article on Nature.com, Quirin Schiermeier tells us the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) warns that “it is ‘virtually certain’ — meaning 99 to100% probability in IPCC terminology — that the twenty-first century will see an increase in the frequency and magnitude of warm temperature extremes and a decrease in cold extremes.”

True to form, 2012 has started out with a springtime-like tornado in Texas, a winter-like, snowy summer in Australia, too little snow in Canada and too much in France, Austria and Germany, drought in Argentina and extreme heat in Africa.

Welcome to the wacky world of weather watchers. 2012 looks like it is going to be a wild ride for most of us.

It seems utterly bizarre to think of anything other than the usual rain, hail and snow falling out of the sky, but there are many official reports from all over the world of showers of a different kind and acknowledged as weather phenomena. Showers of Frogs and Tadpoles are the most common sightings from around the world. For instance, on the afternoon of June 16th 1939, thousands of frogs fell over Trowbridge, England. Strange showers are more common than you’d think. Throughout history there have been persistent stories of showers of things falling out of the sky, from the time of manna to feed the Israelites in the Sinai Desert to the present day. In AD 77 in Greece there was a continuous shower of fish for three days and Pliny the Elder recorded – “…the roads were blocked, people were unable to open their front doors and the town stank for weeks …” Experts have tried to dismiss eyewitness accounts such as the fall of fish on Dunmarra, south of Darwin in February 1994 and a fish shower in Markville, USA on 23 October 1947 that was witnessed by a US Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries Officer. Some other things falling from the skies phenomena include:- Hazelnuts in Dublin in 1867 Snails in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1870 Snails in Algiers in 1973 Crayfish across Florida in 1954 Maggots in Mexico in 1968 Pond mussels in Paderborn, Germany in1892 Jellyfish in Bath, England in 1894 Coal in Bournemouth England in 1983….. In most cases these phenomena occurred when there were severe thunderstorms about. Thunderstorms with updrafts strong enough to suck up anything light enough underneath to be picked up and taken aloft and deposited elsewhere. But what about when we say ‘it’s been raining cats and dogs’? How do you think this saying originated? In my research I found many theories. I think the best answer maybe the one originated in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England when heavy rain flowing down the gutters would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. Animals didn’t fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in heavy storms could easily have coined this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem ‘A Description of a City Shower’ 1710. Another saying when we describe torrential rain is “It’s Coming Down in Stair Rods”‘. How did you think this saying originate? Any suggestions?

Heard this one before? Eleven little black spiders were playing in a saucer with a tiny ball. After a short time the coach, a much bigger spider, standing on the rim of the saucer blue his whistle. “Gather round – boys”, he said, “You’ll have to do a lot better than this next week – you are playing in the Cup”