Amazing Australian Weather
Australia is a pretty big country and has some very varied
extremes of climates, and this can result in some pretty amazing weather.
The year 2005 was Australia's hottest year on record. According
to the Bureau of Meteorology annual climate summary, 2005 was more than
one degree warmer than the average temperature between 1961 and 1990,
the world standard used to track temperature change.
These figures have forced the Federal Government to defend its action
on climate change and global warming. Australia and the US are the only
developed nations to have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which calls
on countries to cut greenhouse emissions by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels
by 2012.
Some national Australian weather facts
Coldest place: Charlotte's Pass in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales
has recorded temperatures as low as minus 22 degrees.
Coldest capital city: Canberra
Wettest capital city: Hobart with 159 rainy days a year, Melbourne in
second place with 147
Wettest town: Tully in North Queensland.
Wettest place: Some of the mountains in North Queensland like Thornton's
Peak in the Daintree receive up to 11 metres ( 11000 mm ) a year in rainfall!
A city like Darwin which can have phenomenal downpours in the wet season
but has long dry seasons too still manages to receive only 1659 mm annually
and Sydney 1223 mm.
Australia has its own version of the mad twister chasers
in the U.S. ; the
Severe Weather Association.
A chilly day in the Northern Territory
In the outback on the border of Northern Territory and Queensland
Normally the Northern Territory is known for its hot weather
but one time in June 1999 on a trip from Darwin to Cairns it was so overcast
that the sun hardly got through the clouds and the temperature dropped
that much that people started joking about a 'nuclear winter'. When we
got to the Daly Waters pub for our lunchstop at noon people were crowding
around the open fireplace for a bit of warmth! The next day near the border
on the most remote stretch of our Darwin to Cairns trip ( see above) it
was still that cold that we had lunch inside the bus at midday and I brought
the gasburner inside to make coffee. But then it also started raining!
No real rain but little spits that just wetted the top of the red dust
which would then stick to the tyres and be thrown up into the wheel guards
where it stuck like superglue. After a while I had to shift down a gear,
then another and finally I started losing the steering as well. I had
already noticed that the wheels on the trailer were no longer turning
as the mud had filled the wheel arches that were now packed solid with
mud holding the tyres firmly in place so we were just dragging the trailer
but then the wheel arches on the bus filled up as well stopping the wheels
from turning. We stopped and then spent an hour digging the solid sticky
clay out of the wheel arches but after we got on the road again it only
took ten minutes for them to fill up again! After we had gone through
this scenario a few times luckily we got back on a gravel road again.
Daly Waters Pub owner Bruce keeps warm by the fire
Photos and story by Rob Lapaer of Rainforest
Hideaway B&B, Cape Tribulation
A warm day in Birdsville
THE tiny south-western Queensland town of Birdsville
has recorded its hottest January day on record when the temperature
hit 49 degrees Celsius on 5 january 2004, but for the locals a few
degrees either way doesn't really matter. The weather bureau has
tipped more of the same for the following days.
That still does not make this the hottest town in
Australia, that honour goes to Marble Bar in the Pilbara region
on the west coast, it became famous for its hot weather when in
1923-24, it experienced a world-record 161 consecutive days when
the temperature was at least 37.8C
Alice Springs lays claim to being the hottest town by having the
highest year round average temperature.
Cape Tribulation rains
In Cape Tribulation, North Queensland, it is not unusual to get
as much rain in an hour as a lot of other places get in a year,
there have been a few occasions where a metre a day was recorded
and up to seven metres a year.
In 1996 about 1.5 metre fell in 36 hours causing the Daintree river
to rise and flow to the point that the ferrycables broke and the
ferry ended up sitting high and dry on the riverbank after the waters
went down again. It is also usual for a dozen or so cars to go down
the creeks when people try to drive through the water running over
the causeways, the two pics below shows the first one for 2004,
this happened in February. (Photos courtesy of Mason's
Tours, Cape Tribulation )
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And this one happened in April 2004:
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This one is a few years older and shows the local bus being
rescued from Cooper Creek just south of Cape Tribulation:
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In January 2006 the road to Cape Tribulation was damaged by a landslide
caused by heavy rains
Photo by Rob Lapaer of Rainforest
Hideaway B&B, Cape Tribulation
During March 2004 another phenomenal amount of rain
came down causing widespread landslides all along the coast, the
highway between Cairns and Port Douglas was cut off and north of
the Daintree river there were landslides too numerous to count,
the photo below shows one of them on the infamous Bloomfield Track
;
Photo courtesy of Mason's
Tours, Cape Tribulation
Cyclones
Cyclones are a seasonal hazard in northern Australia.
They form over the ocean during the summer time/wet season and can
build up to phenomenal strength, weather bureaus watch them carefully
and a system of warnings is in place to keep residents up to date
and give them as much warning as possible. Most towns and cities
have offical cyclone shelters for residents who think their house
may not be up to strength, even though tough building regulations
exist in these areas. Once cyclones hit land they quickly lose strength
so are mainly a problem for coastal communities.
Cyclone Ingrid
Cyclone Ingrid formed in the Coral Sea in February
2005 and slowly headed for the north Queensland coast. Wind gusts
of up to 290 km/h were reported near the centre and at first it
was headed for the Cape Tribulation area but later hit the coast
much further north and passed over the sparsely populated top part
of the Cape York peninsula without doing too much damage.
But once it had crossed and hit water again on the west side it
intensified again and started heading for Darwin. On the way there
it ripped through a pearling fleet of six vessels causing more than
$1 million damage at Gove, in north east Arnhem Land but instead
of hitting Darwin, which had already been wiped out once by cyclone
Tracey ( see below), it hit the Tiwi islands north of Darwin with
winds of up to 235km/h and torrential rain where it ripped off roofs,
knocked out electricity and communications, flung huge trees around,
damaged and sunk boats, but remarkably nobody was killed or injured.
Cyclone Tracy
On Christmas Day 1974 the city of Darwin was hit by cyclone Tracy.
Normally people are given warnings a long time before a cyclone
hits and people get prepared for it but most of the Darwin residents
were too busy celebrating Christmas ( with the usual alcohol that
Darwin was infamous for) so when the full force of Tracy hit most
people were taken by surprise. Countless houses were totally destroyed,
numerous ships sunk in the harbour and all communications were cut
so the rest of the country didn't even know until a radio-amateur
dug some gear out of his cellar and contacted someone in Sydney
after which the rescue operation swung into action. As many people
as possible were immediately evacuated on some record breaking flights
to Adelaide,( planes do not usually have passengers sitting in the
aisles). The death toll was not as high as one would expect considering
the devastation though there are people that claim lots of bodies
were dumped in massgraves and not counted. In the Darwin Museum
in the suburb of Fannie Bay there is a big display on Tracy where
you can get some idea of the impact of this event, there are photographs
of the damage like steel powerpoles twisted like cork screws and
someone found his fridge a mile down the road embedded in a watertank
several metres off the ground. There is also a sound room where
you can get to experience what a cyclone sounds like, a strong warning
is posted on the door for people that have actually been through
the cyclone to think twice about going in there.
Click here for some chilling eye-witness
accounts of cyclone Tracy.
Darwin lightning
In the wet season Darwin receives some incredible
lightning storms and photographers have traveled a long way specially
to photograph this spectacular phenomena. It is also great for office
workers as often after a lightning strike electricity will drop
out giving a great excuse to have a coffee and a cigarette and wait
for the computers to start working again.
Gold Coast hail storm
Most people only picture golden beaches and sunshine
when they think of the Gold Coast but in October 2005 a massive
hail storm struck the Gold Coast. The area was pounded by a furious
storm that dumped hailstones the size of tennis balls which caused
a $50 million damage bill.
Learn about the weather
If you want to learn more about weather, forecasts and meteorology
visit this education page at www.bom.gov.au
Morning Glory
The tiny Queensland outback town of Burketown is home
to a phenomenon only found in one other place in the world ( the
Gulf of Mexico); the Morning Glory. Towards the end of the dry season
this strange cloud formation will form and like a giant tube will
roll over the town.
Sydney hailstorm
On 14 April 1999 the eastern suburbs of Sydney were
struck by an unprecedented severe hailstorm causing extensive damage
estimated of the order of $1Billion, making it possibly Australia's
costliest ever natural disaster. The storm was also highly unusual
in meteorological terms, it produced some of the largest hail ever
recorded in Sydney and occurred at a time of year when severe thunderstorms
are normally rare. Hail stones of 9cm in diameter hammered down
on the eastern suburbs for five and a half hours. Chaos reigned,
roofs of houses had been smashed and there were not enough tarpaulins
in Sydney to cover them all up. Some home owners had to wait up
to a year to get their roof fixed as there were just not that many
roof tiles in Australia to replace all the smashed roofs, tradesmen
had to be flown in from all over the country. Car owners faced a
long wait for new windscreens as they had to be manufactured or
imported as demand far exceeded the stocks held in Australia. If
the car was worth fixing that was, many cars were just written off
alltogether.
Willy willy
If you do some traveling through the outback you are
bound to see at least one of those; a dust-gathering, spiralling
wind that occurs from time to time in Australian deserts and the
outback, basically a mini-tornado but small enough to be harmless.
Have you experienced some amazing Australian weather?
Then contact us!
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