Following a forecast

 The 7 day weather forecast for Mallacoota issued by BoM on 3 October looked interesting with an apparent series of rain events.

I was particularly interested in the heavyish rainfall suggested for the 6th, 7th and 9th (especially that for the 9th).  So I recorded these to see what happened.  As I start this post off the forecast period has not yet finished so I can't give an overall mark, but it is not looking good.  Here is the Meteye forecast issued on the 8th: note particularly the rainfall now offered for the 9th.

A little later (1940 AEDT) I looked at the Canberra (ie Captains Flat) radar image.

The system is basically moving South so we still seemed to have a fair chance of a fall.  However by 0626 on the 9th it seems the system has stalled, or perhaps is slipping a bit to the East.  Canberra has copped 34 mm, Jervis Bay 80 mm and Uller Duller (sorry Ulladulla) 105 mm.  Interestingly, when looking at a pressure map (isobars etc) the system appears as a linear front, rather than the cyclonic low pressure cell I would have expected from the radar image.  By midday the system had either moved right out f range r dissiated completely.

What the numbers quoted by BoM for rain mean are the lower number is 50% chance of greater than this and the higher number is the 25% chance.  (Another way of looking at this is to say there is a 50% chance of LESS than the smaller number!)

We have now reached the end of the forecast period.  Here is an image of the colour-coded outcome:

Quite a few of the readings were "about right": I don't feel inclined to attempt to be precise in such a dodgy exercise, especially where the BoM changed its forecast as the date approached.  The only element they understated was the rainfall on 8 October.  My suspicion is that they expected the area of rain to come slightly further South than it did before moving out to sea.  I'd rate the Bureau's performance as perhaps a C grade: good have been better but not the epic fail it looked like at one point.