It's All Orange Outside

forgive me if i am wrong, but the amazing thing to me, is that it hasn't been that windy here (Canberra) in the last few days - and yet we got a big duststorm on Wednesday.

maybe the winds have been up high?

Was it windy in Sydney on the Thursday (or wednesday night) of the duststorm?

Where did this duststorm come from and where were the warnings? ie duststorm in Canberra on Wed, expect dust storm on east coast on Thursday? Did i miss the warnings and bulletins?

I would've thought that things like this would've been easily to predict by a day or two, and yet we woke in Canberra to it on Wednesday and east coast on Thursday with no warning....did i miss something?

Thanks


g
 
yeah - you missed it. we were warned about gale force winds and dust around 2 days before it hit - and boy! was it windy and damn dusty.

glad i had to very sick and very huge gums taken out last week!
 
Actually drove the 'other' way today and yup, we had a tornado all right. All these huge gum trees have the top 1/3 of them lopped off, most of the roads were down to 25 with council madly collecting broken branches and uprooted trees. And we have some freakin huge gum trees here, the primary industry here is forestry so its good tree growing country.

Then you drive the usual way (ie, to the school) and there's only tiny branches and twigs blown off the trees. Amazing the difference 1km makes.

The tornado took a lot of rooves off houses in the towns south of us.
 
gg1965 said:
Where did this duststorm come from and where were the warnings?
Click to expand...


There were heaps of warnings about massive strength winds for days before the event. There was even forecasts of 'raised dust'.

I heard a weather expert say yesterday, that it's easy to forecast possible dust storms, but you never know for sure till it happens, if it will or not.

The dust came from the centre of the continent, and especially from the lake Eyre region. Some places out there have had less than 10 mills rain so far for the whole year.!!


See ya's.


See ya's.
 
Blue Card! said:
thank god for the roaring forties. they weather my kangaroo paws good, but there ain't no dust where i live.
Click to expand...

Hate to be pedantic BC but Burns Beach is 31degrees 43minutes south by my reckoning... that would put you well outside the Roaring Forties, which obviously start at 40 degrees south and proceeds all the way down to the Furious Fifties!

Even Albany is only 35 degrees south - if you were in Tassie on the other hand... :)
 
Blue Card! said:
you mean a cyclone....?
Click to expand...
They said tornado on the news. It had a very narrow path and sliced a line over about a 100km path. Aren't cyclones a tropical thing?

We get heaps of dust here when the farmers are clearing the fields in summer before the big jan/feb rains. Amazing what them big ploughing thingies do to the dirt *looks at Topcropper for help with terminology*
 
RumpledElf said:
They said tornado on the news. It had a very narrow path and sliced a line over about a 100km path. Aren't cyclones a tropical thing?
Click to expand...

Yes, you got a tornado (or "twister" in American). A cyclone is technically a low pressure system, but more commonly used to describe severe southern hemisphere tropical storms ("hurricanes" in the northern hemisphere).

Cheers,

The Y-man
 
It's All Orange Outside - round #2

It's All Orange Outside in Sydney - again :eek: - though not as dark this time - but I'm finding a bit more sneezy.

I suppose the August winds just turned up late in Septmeber.

At least its not freezing cold with rain & possible hail that Melbourne is expecting later today.:p
 
RumpledElf said:
We get heaps of dust here when the farmers are clearing the fields in summer before the big jan/feb rains. Amazing what them big ploughing thingies do to the dirt *looks at Topcropper for help with terminology*
Click to expand...


I haven't ploughed any soil for 15 years. I've forgot what it does to the soil, but it wouldn't be good I'm sure. The second dust storm has just cleared from here. Wasn't as bad as Wednesdays though.


I didn't realise farmers over there would be ploughing at that time of year. We did a farm tour 5 or 6 years ago, went through all the area north of Adelaide, around about September or so, and it seemed to me that most farmers were zero tilling. They said if you plough it up it will blow away.

What's this about the big Jan/Feb rains? You lot are supposed to be dry then? Looking at historic rainfall records for your area, you get 2.5 times the rain in winter compared to summer and often it doesn't rain at all in summer.? I'm just the opposite here, January, I average 85 mills, and just 40 mills or so in the winter months.


See ya's.
 
We get the bulk of our ran in Jan/Feb as a general rule, then another big lot in winter. Adelaide is too far south to get the summer rains. I got a bit surprised when I moved here at the volume of rain that gets dumped at the height of summer, but it is very good when you rely on rainwater for your household supplies, a day's summer rain can fill my big 20,000L tank completely. In 2007 we got flooded in November (40mm in 1/2 hour) and then another deluge in February 2008. Fun times.

Noone is ploughing this early - the fields are all green and just starting to set seed at the moment, big impressive looking crops coming up. I think its all barley or wheat and canola here, with sheep in the fallow fields.

Back to weather, it hailed last night so much there was drifts of fine hail all along our fenceline when we got up, nice and white. It didn't melt until midday :eek:

ETA:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_019062_All.shtml
Mean for July is about 40 and mean for Jan/Feb is about 20 but the PEAK rain for July is also about 40 and when I went looking through historical data one time (can't find it now) there were heaps of peaks in Jan/Feb around 60-80mm. The peak for Feb is 101mm!! Max temp 44 in Feb, min in July of -8. Why bother raining in Feb at all if its just going to evaporate? Stupid weather.
 
More dust here this morning. Was also dusty yesterday, so that's 4 days of dust counting the other 2 days.

Is this lot of dust getting to the coast?


See ya's.
 
yes - it is getting here. forecasters predict that until the inland gets 10cm of rain, we will continue to get dust storms every time the wind blows in a westerly direction.
 
lizzie said:
forecasters predict that until the inland gets 10cm of rain, we will continue to get dust storms every time the wind blows in a westerly direction.
Click to expand...


Hmm. It's coming from central Australia. Some of those places are lucky to get 100 mills in a year, and I read somewhere that some parts have had less than 10 mills this year.

Gee's, we don't need this every time it blows from the west.


See ya's.
 
Hi,

I'm on the Gold Coast and it's pretty dusty here right now. Not as bad as last time. Have just done a load of washing so that should ensure that it will be worse than last time.

Pretty scary stuff I think as you cannot replace all that topsoil wherever it's coming from

Sling
 
I imagine the Qld brigade won't notice much. The rivers will all still look muddy and horrible.

Has everyone done their civic duty and cleaned the first lot off, ready for the next. We've got a bunch more ready to go ?? :)
 
RumpledElf said:
They said tornado on the news. It had a very narrow path and sliced a line over about a 100km path. Aren't cyclones a tropical thing?
Click to expand...

Cyclone spins anti clockwise - like water down the drain in the southern hemisphere

Tornado spins clockwise - like water down the drain in the northern hemispere.

Hurricanes are generally clockwise, but at the equator they squall which is why they are so devastating.

While i'm sure there's one or two exceptions to the rule (intense (600kPa) low pressure sytem etc) it's nigh on impossible for a storm to turn against these basic physics fundamentals.
 
Blue Card! said:
Cyclone spins anti clockwise - like water down the drain in the southern hemisphere

Tornado spins clockwise - like water down the drain in the northern hemispere.
Click to expand...

From Wikipedia (in a much larger article about the Coriolis effect):

Some sources that incorrectly attribute draining direction to the Coriolis force also get the direction wrong, claiming that water would turn clockwise into drains in the Northern Hemisphere.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect

Edit: Aaaah, here is the page I was really looking for... http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html A very interesting read.
 
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