Late November 2023 weather event

 I was astonished to see the BoM weather forecast for Mallacoota show rainfall for 29 November listed as 50mm to 110 mm followed by 30mm to 90 mm on the 30th.  In retrospect, that seems to have been one of the BoM's better forecasts!  

My weather station ended with 96.4mm of rain on calendar 29/11 and at 0500hrs on 30/11 has already recorded 28.4mm.  The BoM at the airport have recorded 89.2mm for 29/11 and 24.2 for 30/11.  Somewhat surprisingly they only recorded 46.8mm on Gabo for 29/11 but are now more in step with 33.6 to 0500 on the 30th.

Putting matters in a longer perspective by 0700 on the 30th we are up to 210mm for the month.  That is our 3rd highest November (I hope we don't get to be #2, but it only needs another 50mm) and 23rd out of all 587 months for which I have data.  (While typing that, another mm came down, elevating this month to #20 all time.)

The first set of images show the 512 km composite radar plot centred on Bairnsdale.

29 November 1250hrs

29 November 1523 hrs - note the storms from Bateman's Bay North.

30 November 0500hrs,

30 November 1349hrs: it seemed that the rain had calmed down, but in the last hour he have had a series of squalls, delivering over 30mm and totally overwhelming the gutters.

I will put up a table comparing various sites when the even is over (or at least has calmed down).    At present the most interesting aspect is comparing the rainfall between 0900 and 1500 on 30 November.

BoM Airport             23.8mm

BoM Gabo Island     36.4mm

Angophora Drive     43.2mm

Clarke St                  40.0mm

Most of the fall at Angophora has come in the 2 hours between noon and 1400hrs and featured some fierce squalls with maximum rain rates of 139 and 109 mm/hr.  That explains the variation between the sites.  Also of interest is that on the 29th Gabo had much less rain than the airport: today it has reversed!

I went for a drive (to Bucklands) as Lakeside Drive was closed and took a few snaps.  This is the gully opposite our house.  I have never seen this much water here.

Bucklands Boat hire needs a boat to get to the boats!

The Narrows are a bit wider

A gully between Karbeethong and Sunny Corner.  Again never seen water like this.

These folk at Karbeethong Jetty seemed to be having a toughish time getting all their kit off the houseboats and into their cars.  I think they would also have some memories of the trip back to the Jetty.

A storm doesn't miss Mallacoota

 A contributor to the Mallacoota Community News Facebook Group posted a couple of images with the comment "Not in coota but close enough to scare our pets probably". The first image was produced by the BoM at 1618 hours.

Vic Roads republished this.

At 1839hrs the Mallacoota SES put a further post out, updating the BoM warning.  In effect the BoM filled in the bit they left out.

A snip from Blitzortung.com, at 1928 hrs shows that the fill-in was needed.

Snipping that to the Mallacoota area shows that the lightning strikes stopped almost at the Western shoreline of the Inlet.

I haven't got a precise count of the number of strikes (forgot to turn it on in Blitzortung, and Tempest.com is not showing the number of strikes yet) but the storm still shows in Blitzortung (at 0615 on 26 November it is about 350km SE of Mallacoota, level with Flinders Island) and is showing about 1200 strikes in the last 2 hours.

In terms of overall rainfall the BoM Airport site recorded 39.6mm between 1850hrs and 2030hrs.  The Gabo Island site recorded 16.2mm between 1936hrs and 2130hrs reflecting the edge of the storm being the Western shore of the inlet.  Other recordings around town included:

Nauta Tce 36mm

Clarke St  32mm

Angophora Dr (home) 28.2mm

The peak rain rate recorded at Angophora Drive was 152 mm/hr which is the 9th heaviest rate recorded since I started up in February 2019.  

The wind direction is interesting.  At home the wind direction was between NE and NW all day apart from the 2000hrs reading, during the storm, when it was from SW.  The BoM airport site shows a swing from NNW to WSW at 0700 remaining around SW until 0759 when CALM was recorded.  (That pretty much matches the records (every 10 minutes) from Clarke St.  Wind speeds showed gusts up to 50kph at the airport and 52 kph on Gabo.

In term of what may come down the River, the Bombala AWS site effectively missed out on all this excitement but had recorded 12.6mm by 0900hrs on 25th.  The month-to-date fall there is 51.8mm so there could be a little bit coming "down the pipe" especially if there is a fall inland in coming days.

Birds of the Wallagaraugh

 I went on a cruise with Mallacoota Cruises on the Gipsy Princess from Gipsy Point up the mighty Wallagaraugh River. This followed a cruise which I missed on Monday.  Here is the route we followed.

A White-bellied Sea-Eagle (first of three for the trip) was a good start. 

It is unusual -according to Dale, whose farm is just upstream from this sandbar - to see a Black-fronted Plover here.

A good breeding record.

This shows the eBird records for Black Bittern.  

It is a skulker, in a very skulky subset of birds.  Some members of the Mallacoota Birds FB group have tried many times, unsuccessfully, to find this bird.  I think this was about my 4th or 5th attempt.  As we went under the bridge I saw a black, Bittern-looking bird in the vegetation.  Bingo: I didn't get a really good view of the whole bird, nor a photo-op, but good enough to be sure  had seen this species.  A lifer.

Back to normal: Great Cormorant.

Azure Kingfishers have been a little sparse recently but this one posed nicely above some evidence that it often uses this spot.

Two Welcome Swallows - I took the photo so why not use it.

This Google Sheet contains all the species seen on this trip and the one on the previous Monday.  As the earlier trip included nearly all very keen expert birders it is not surprising they recorded more species : I am surprised the Thursday trip missed those highlighted in yellow.  It is possibly more surprising that the later trip, with a more generalist set of passengers, recorded 10 species not seen by the guns especially the two species high-lit in green.

November Plant walk

 Our November U3A Mallacoota plant walk began at the start of the Captain's Creek Fire Trail.  A full list of the plants identified - a fair number less than the plants seen - is in the page "Captains Creek Track etc" in this Google Sheet.  Over the 4 walks held thus far we have recorded 85 species, adding 13 to the list on this walk.  

23 species were recorded on this walk with 15 added to iNaturalist, and thus being noted under the Project "U3A Mallacoota Plant Walks": this Project, set up following Bryce Watts-Parker's October presentation to U3A, includes all 566 observations in iNaturalist for the Project area covering 352 species.  (Thinking of recent presentations, this walk recorded 4 orchid species covered in Gary Backhouse's November presentation.)

Platylobium formosum

Pultenaea hispidula

Scaevola ramosissima

Dillwynia glaberrima

Kennedia prostrata

Ricinocarpos pinifolius

Hypericum gramineum: this is a smaller, native, species than the invasive weed "St John's Wort" but in the same genus.

Pimelia linifolia

Billardiera scandens

Dampiera stricta

This track is usually 'home' to a many orchids from a wide range of species.  This year as a result of the very dry conditions from June to September there were hardly any orchids seen.  The exception were a few specimens of Caleana major, the Large Flying Duck, found in the centre of the track and photographed by Caroline.

Caroline reported that a few more orchids had been found by the Footmobiles on the roadside near the information board, so we went to check that area out.  We found some Viola headeracea along the way.

Burchardia umbellata

Patersonia fragilis

Calochilus campestris

Microtis sp.

A few birdy snaps

On 7/11 (Q: why don't people in Quebec phone the 7-11 stores?  A: their phones don't have a button for 11!) I went to the Pumping Station to check on the Powl seen near there recently.

No joy for Powl on the 7th but I did score a nice male Satin Bowerbird ...

... and male Scarlet Honeyeater.

October 2023 Weather Report

After a small delay, sorry reader,  here is the weather report for October.  A rather variable month with slightly warm and wet as a summary.

Rain

After 4 months with very much below median rainfall October was 163% of the median fall for the month.  While most (70%) of that fall came in an event on 4-5 October there were non-trivial falls on 9 days.

The heavy fall (temporarily)arrested the decline in the pro-rata estimate of overall rain for the year but the dryness of the last two weeks has resumed the downwards trajectory.  As at the end of the month the projected fall for 2023 in total is 658mm, which would be the third lowest fall recorded.

Temperatures

The average temperature for the month was 0.46C above the long term average for October.  This metric (the anomaly).  There was a very hot start to the month after which the anomaly varied between close to zero and +1C.

The time series of values for the anomaly shows October to be a drop back to the recent range of usual values (although a 3-year series is way too short to make any definite statements).

A chart of daily extremes shows the maxima to have several spells of well above average values while the minima are closer to average (but with few significantly low values).

The 1st and 3rd were the only days with both minimum and maximum above the long term mean for the equivalent variables, so no heat waves or cold snaps.

Minimum temperatures

The average minimum temperature for the month was 0.4C above the long term October mean minimum.  On 5 days the minimum was >1SD above the monthly mean with 1 day >2SD.  There were no runs of 3+ days of significantly elevated minima.  Only 1 day was significantly below the monthly mean minimum.

Maximum temperatures

The average maxmimum temperature for the month was 0.5C above the long term October mean maximum.  On 7 days the maximum was >1SD above the monthly mean with 1 day >2SD.  There were no runs of 3+ days of significantly elevated maxima.  Only 1 day was significantly below the monthly mean minimum.

Humidity

The daily readings for humidity at the standard times of 0900 and 1500 show the month to be somewhat muggier than I would expect, with few 1500 readings below 50%.  However, for both values the monthly average is below average (for the 5 years for which I have data).

The only really interesting feature in the chart is 12 October with a very high 0900 reading followed by a very low 1500 reading.  This matches very closely with BoM data for the Airport which also shows a shift in the wind from North (=dry) at 0900 to SSW (= moist) at 1500.

Wind

My gut feeling was that it was a pretty windy month and the data, fortunately, backs that up.  The next chart shows the daily average hourly run for 2023 and the average of the previous 4 Octobers  It is clear that this year had longer runs on many days.

The longest run (326k, on the 21st) is the 5th longest October run (of 151 records).