Not foggy, WET

 Today dawned ... sort of,  with rain falling.    It had started just before 2300 hrs on 10 May and is still coming down at 1500 hrs on 11 May.

I had initially been very dubious of the forecasts of 40 - 80mm but the total is currently 47mm at home, with 33mm at the Airport and an even 50 mm on Gabo Island.

A retired (OK, I don't think he gets paid for it now) meteorologist commented on the morning of May 10:

"All those models have a deep upper low crossing the far W VIC coast in the next few hours after which it slowly moves into SE NSW by midday tomorrow. At that point it gets caught in a lull in the jetstream and becomes nearly stationary until Thursday after which models diverge, but all have it wandering aimlessly around eastern NSW until late Thursday/early Friday before a strengthening jet steers it off into the Tasman. In the lower atmosphere this brings a trough with embedded lows through Bass Strait today with a low sitting on the NSW SC tomorrow. That directs an airstream that is very moist (>90% RH) and very deep (all the way to above 300hPa) directly onto the E Gippsland coast, combining topographic uplift, instability and deep moisture.

So not surprising theta the view from my window has looked this (or worse) for the day so  far.

The tank has got a good top up!

This isn't too clear an image but it is rare to see so many whitecaps on the Inlet.  Not a good day to go for a paddle in the kayaks!

Not a good day to go for a pelagic outing either (unless in something the size to HMAS Choules)!

I went to Betka looking for exotic terns and there were none.  The mouth of that River was closed the previous day but the waves were breaking over it.  So I expect that with pressure frm both sides it will be open again any time from now.

The radars have been interesting with Mallacoota right on the edge of the 256 km beam from Bairnsdale  ...

and Canberra.

The app on my phone brings them both together but doesn't do a very good job of plugging the gap

By 2000 hrs everything seems to have calmed down with my gauge totaling 60 mm for the day and 61.8 for the event so far (Airport 45.8 mm and Gabo 56.2mm).  Bombala AWS scored 43.4 mm for the day so there will be a good lot coming down the Genoa River in a day or two.  

A further squall came through later in the evening putting the day up to 62.2 at home..

Foggy, foggy days

The words "Foggy, foggy" are musically followed by 'dew' as in this example by Marty Robins.  ( I tried to find some English/Irish examples but they all seem to be a Benjamin Britten reworking or a very different song about the Easter Uprising).

However what this post is about follows my noticing how most days recently seem to start with fog in the valleys visible from my window.  That made me wonder about the seasonality of fog.  The best measure I could come up with is high (>90%) outside humidity.   So I calculated the number of hourly humidity readings >90% as a percentage of total humidity readings for each month, as recorded by my Weather Station.  A chart of the result follows.

Nothing too surprising in the way of a monthly pattern there!  However it did cause me to wonder how the pattern related to wind strength, so I calculated the average hourly wind run for each month.  The result was hard to compare with the humidity as the numbers were smaller, so I created an indicator by multiplying the wind run by 3 (which doesn't alter the pattern between months).

While the R2 coefficients aren't huge, they suggest the patterns are largely opposites: higher wind, lower humidity.  That sort of makes sense in that the wind mixes up the air, but on the other hand goes against the strong winds being related to the passage of fronts or passing storms.

A sunrise and some nature pics

 These come from May 8.

The sunrise looked interesting early on with the colour reflected in Bottom Lake.  The first two pictures were taken from the top of Angophora Drive at 0619.

After returning home the colour grew more intense so I went out the front of the house and took a photo, which I saved on my computer.

I then adjusted the pixcel count so it saved correctly!

Looking out the back of the house gives a different view.

The 8th of May was eBird's Global Big Day, where they try to get as many people as possible to put in as many lists as possible.  I did 6 lists in total, all close to home, covering 46 species.

I started at Bastion Point where a lot of foam was evident.

A product of a very rough sea.

Here is the route I followed.  

It is very silly logging this as a walk of 2.55 km (mainly because it is greatly affected by how much I weaved about.  Its much better to use a BLA protocol of 500m circle radius which covers where I walked.

The best bird was Caspian Tern.  I saw 3 different birds, after not having seen any for a couple of months.

There was a lot of Eel Grass washed up on the sea and Inlet shores.  It made a good pattern.

So did the little (about 10cm diameter) depressions in the sand, cut by ripples.

This huge ship out on the horizon was Panamanian registered  and heading for Melbourne according to my Marine Traffic app.

On the way home I called in to the Broome St Lagoon for a quick checklist.  The high;ight was the tree full of the Heron family: 12 Royal Spoonbills; 2 Great Egrets and 3 Australian White Ibis.

In case you wondered what a Spoonbill's armpit looked like!

Sundry snaps at Mallacoota

 This is a collection of snaps I have taken in the last couple of days, broadly related to the weather and wildlife around the town.

I start with looking at The Narrows from home early on the 7th.

Later in the morning looking from Captain Stevenson's Point.  The Inlet imitates Brigadoon!

In the early afternoon the radar on my phone suggests a fair amount of rain on the way.  (We ended up with 8.6mm for the day.)

The Bairnsdale 256km radar stresses how far East Gippsland was the only bit of Victoria getting a serve at this time.

The Canberra 256km Radar shows rhat much of the NSW Coast South of Sydney was copping it.

After a U3A meeting I went back to Captain Stevenson's Point checking for Terns. Only Crested available, but a good crop of Godwits ... 

.. and this, which has been identified on ABID as a Great Knot.  Sorry about the naff photos but the bird was 500m away and the telescope kept vibrating.

A good sunset through the mist and cloud.

On the 8th, the day began with light reflected in the Inlet.  The first photo is from high up Angophora at 0615 ..

.. while the second is at the bottom of our garden at 0635.

April 2021 Weather Report

 Overall cool, calm and collected dry.  The BoM declared that the La Nina event was over and so it would appear to be.

Rainfall

After a few months with well above median falls April, with 30mm, was well under the median of 79.1mm.  There are 8 Aprils (since 1975) with lower falls.

Looking at the year as a whole we are still at 125% of the average year to date fall.  This gives a prorata estimate of 1196mm for the year.  Progress on that estimate shows the impact of a couple of large events.  Note the chart starts on 9 January as good falls on 3 and 5 January give ridiculous (think tropical India amounts) estimates earlier in the year.

Temperatures

The month had a warm-hot spell from the 2nd to the 9th, after which cool became the best word.  From the 10th onwards 15 of 21 days had below average values for minimum and maximum.  The month ended with the overall average temperature 0.55C below the long term average.

The next chart compares the daily BoM temperature extremes with the average extreme values for the date.  Again clear how cool the final 3 weeks were,

A similar pattern of current daily extremes is given by my weather station.

Minimum temperatures

The average minimum temperature for the month was 11.6C, slightly. below average.  As I now have values for three years the next graph shows the monthly averages for those three years.  Tracking quite nicely.

Using my traditional presentation shows 2021 to be below 2020 and the (largely BoM) longer term average values.

Maximum temperatures

The average Maximum temperature for April recorded by BoM was 19.9C slightly below the average for that site.  As usual my weather station, not exposed to the cooing sea breeze was somewhat warmer averaging 21.3 (above the long term average (which is mainly BoM values.).  As for minimums I now have a 3 year series for my weather station which shows the value for 2021 to be right on the pattern.

The traditional graph shows an April value above long term average but below 2020,

Humidity

By Mallacoota standards humidity at my weather station was quite low, as would be expected from the low rainfall.

The average 0900 value was slightly above the value for 2020 and the historic value for the BoM.  It was the hihest of the three years for which I have WS values.

The 1500 hrs value was well below both the traditional charted values and the weather station measure in 2019.  

Wind

A calm month!  The average daily wind run was much lower than both 2020 and my historic (adjusted for exposure) BoM value.

The breezes which were recorded were heavily biased towards the West and North North West directions.  I was initially surprised at this chart, but on examining my weather station data it appears to be quite a common situation for Winter: in Summer winds from the ESE are more common.  Thus it might be held that the Winter pattern has arrrived a little early this year.