A long rain "event"

 We are currently in a La Nina situation which in Australia means above average rainfall.  (In some other places it means below average rain.  It seems this is a zero-sum game.)  In mid February this seemed unlikely as we went 12 days with no rain.  It started raining on 24 February and at the time of starting this post we have gone 13 consecutive days with at least 0.4mm of rain with total fall over the period of 145.4mm. Looking at the big days its possible there have really been 2 events which sort-of ran into each other!

The radar image at 0500 hrs on 8 March suggests there is plenty more to come.

It appears that my Weather Station (WS) is right in the line of squalls as by 0600 on the 8th we have scored 52.6 mm (since 0900 on 7 March) compared with 40.2 mm at the airstrip and 33.0 mm on Gabo Island.  I shall confirm the WS reading by reference to my Nylex plastic gauge when daylight arrives. 

In a post yesterday I mentioned the width of the Genoa and Wallagaraugh Rivers.  There is an official gauge on the Genoa (a few km upstream from the highway) which shows it is beginning to nudge minor flood level.  

I suspect the cattle on the Genoa Flats will be breaking out the snorkels any time from now.  The official BoM flood warning is IMO very conservative about the likely rainfall in the lower part of the Genoa catchment, although it doesn't seem to be extending far inland.  By 1430 on the 8th the gauge was recording 2.15m: obviously very close to minor flood level of 2.20 m.  As it is still pouring at Mallacoota it isn't a giant leap of faith to say it is going to exceed the minor flood level.

At 0740 I looked at the Weatherzone 'Victorian' radar.  I have put in the apostrophes as this includes a fair amount of NSW, especially the coast. 

In animated form it shows the main movement at Mallacoota is from the North, but most of the heavier falls (yellow) are staying around Bateman's Bay.  I think there is still plenty to come for us.

Thank goodness the Mouth is open.  The official gauge at the Wharf has been showing a level around 0.44 m for the past few days but will I suspect be a good bit higher today.  To put it in context here are a couple of snaps of the Broome St Lagoon Boardwalk from our morning walk.

The area covered with Samphire is usually well clear of the water.

The pole furthest out in the water has a diagonal strut supporting it.  That is usually clearly visible: my guess is that the water is about 30cm higher than it was a week ago.  When the Mouth was last closed the level at the gauge got to 1.58 m on 20 July 2020 and the water was well over the entire boardwalk.  Then Parks opened the channel on the 21st.  

I have now checked the official gauge: it is at 0.68m so up about 24 cm in the last few days.

Sticking with the gauge I went back about 2 hours later and it was up to 0.72 m, which may combine rising tide and rainfall effects.

One of the lower jetties is close to going under.

As is the parking area along Lakeside Drive near Mullet Creek.  The red dashes are the usual water line.

By 1600 hrs we have received 71.4 mm today plus 10.8 mm yesterday for a total of 82.2 mm for this part of the event.  As we are less than a quarter of the way through the year my pro-rata estimate gets a fair amount of rata: the current estimate for the annual total is 1,827 mm.  Which isn't going to happen - but if it did would whup the previous Wet Year by some 380mm!

The rain has continued overnight with 16.4 mm since midnight.  Weatherzone radar shows the system as having moved out to sea ...

... but it is still raining at our house.  Total for the event is now 213mm and the pro-rata estimate for 2022 is now 2014 mm!  The flood gauge at Wangarabell has been on, or just over, minor flood level for some hours and a friend who drove in yesterday afternoon reported that all the paddocks at Genoa were under water before dark.  A post to the Mallacoota Community FB group reports water over Lakeside Drive in three places (presumably the usual ones between Broome St and Mirabooka St.

I was asked for an interview by ABC East Gippsland (great fun Mim Cook) and by the time it started I was down at Fisheries Jetty so they got live commentary of a car testing (successfully) the waters.

The boardwalk is covered ...

... as are jetties, small and ...

.. large.

As I was leaving the Police came along and put out cones.  They will be suggesting to the Shire that they close the road asap. 

Looking out of my window, Karbeethong Jetty is going under.

An alternative view of Karbeethong Jetty.

Run off across the path into the Narrows walking track.

The main wharf is well flooded.  Making a guess from earlier images of the depth gauge I suspect it is registering a depth of about 1.2m: this would be an increase of about 0.8 m in 4 days.  That is round about 20 million cubic metres of water.

Strange goings on at Captain Stevenson's Point.

Note the white rope going off the front of the truck!

In this image I have overlaid red on the white rope to show it going out to this boat that has been washed round from the wharf.

The mouth was wide open and very rough.

The view from the boat ramp area at Bastion Point.  For some reason the waves weren't breaking over the Fairly Big Wall.

Two views from the stairs down to the beach at Bastion.

Wallagaraugh unfullfilled

 Having had reports of a Black Bittern on the Wallagaraugh, near the bridge, and needing to get out of the house we took ourselves off there.  This was because the very dreary weather of the last 2 days was leading to cabin fever: no worthwhile rain just heavy overcast.  Of course it started to rain more seriously as soon as the Pajero was out of the drive but we persevered,

It rained solidly all the way.  As we passed through Genoa the River was bank to bank, rather than the usual trickle down the middle.  It continued to rain as we went to the Wallagaraugh, and strong run off was going beside the road from the Highway to the start of the Fairhaven Expressway.

We started by going to the end of a little track before the bridge.  No Bittern, but we were impressed by the flow going across this paddock.

A small creek back towards the road also had good flow and a fair bit of foam.

The tree terns n the gully were luxuriant.  My guess is the tallest ones were approach 3m.  Quite impressive how they survived the fire.

Also impressive was this old eucalypt on the Fairhaven side of the bridge.

After turning round we parked in the middle of the bridge to scan for Bitterns.  I was confident that rush hour on the Wallagaraugh had finished, but kept an eye open for any incoming traffic!  (There was none, but we were only there an hour.)  On the subject of 'none' that is an accurate summary of the Bittern situation upstream  ...

.. and downstream.  The window was slightly up to try to stop the rain coming in too greatly.

Note the width of the river: with both Rivers running this strongly it is a good thing the Mouth of the Inlet is open.  A Eucalypt just upstream was flowering well but didn't seem to be attracting any birds.

Sunrise 220305

 This was very much under the Julian Alps rule: if a scene looks reasonable take the photo now as it might soon be gone.  In the case of this sunrise the major developments lasted about 5 minutes!

The first snap is from our house, in case everything had gone pear shaped by the time I got up Angophora to Sheoak Rd.  It is looking about ENE.

From Sheoak Rd, looking North.

Towards Gabo, with Tullaberga Island in the foreground.

This is about 4 minutes after the first photo.

10 minutes after the first image, with Mr Sun nearly above the horizon.

4 Beaches

 This starts on Monday when we looked down at the beach from Point Difficult.  It seemed clear of water, even though the tide height forecast (0.08) wasn't as low as it can get (0.01).  That led to a thought of trying the 3 Beaches walk the next day.  On the way back to the car at Betka We spotted an attractive Jacky Dragon beside the track. 

So on the Wednesday (2 March) we parked at Betka and headed West.  We soon sighted an Australian Pied Oystercatcher with a leg flag.  It displayed the usual level of cooperation.

Having thought is was out of range it then turned side on - even the side which shows the flag!  It will get chucked out of the wader fraternity for such a breach of the rules.

This is a bird I have seen before and my records show it was first banded in 2013 (at Corner Inlet, about 400km West) and a month later was first seen at Mallacoota.  It has been recorded at Mallacoota twice more before this day.

We then spotted an Eastern Reef Egret and friend.

Due to the high humidity the beach had an almost mystical (mistical?) look.

The Egret posed again.  (Our final sight of this species was on the second beach as we came back, but I suspect it was the same bird taking a change of scenery.)

An attraction of this walk is the appearance of the heavily stratified rocks of the cliffs and on the beach.

If there was any justice in the world this set of exposed rocks would be humming with Wandering Tattlers.  I recall a Larry Niven sci-fi novel based on the concept of TANJ - There Ain't No Justice!

As the forecast deluge was holding off we decided that too many beaches are never enough and took ourselves to Beach 4 (Bastion) hoping for waders.

No waders present: my guess is they were all up the Inlet on Goodwin Sands with rather less punters and pooches. 

It then became Bonus Time with a White-bellied Sea-Gull stooping at the waterline and flying off with talons full of former fish.

Here is the prey.  Can any of the fisherpersons identify this?

February 2022 Weather Report

 The overall summary of the month changed quite a lot in the last week of the month.  Until 23 February the temperature anomaly was negative (ie below average temperatures) and the rain was very little.  In the last few days the temperature has risen and the rainfall is well above long term mean and median.  Not  surprisingly it was also humid!  Hola La Niña!

Caveat

Note that in the process of moving to a new ACER computer  - much better than the Dell I have suffered with for the past 2 years - I lost data for 3 days (15-17 February). I have incorporated key values from the BoM site to plug the gap.  Also the BoM station was hors de combat for 3 days and WS values have been used instead.  Not perfect, but IM(H?)O fit for purpose.

Rainfall

Quite a few of the daily falls are trivial so wouldn't show up on a column chart.  The best illustration of rainfall is the cumulant through the month.  This can be presented simply using daily totals ...

.. or with greater precision using hourly data.  

The longest vertical line shows the impact of the 19.6mm recorded in the hour from 10:00 am on 26 February.  That is the 5th heaviest hourly fall I have recorded here: of the 4 others 2 were consecutive hours (2200 and 2300) on 23 March 2021 totalling 49.4 mm.

We ended the month with 89.2 mm which is well above last year and the long term median.  (Also above the long term mean, despite quite a few February falls >100mm.)

Progress of my pro-rata annual estimate is interesting.  This is the second year in a row where there has been a large fall in the first half of January putting the estimate at daft levels early in the year.

Temperatures

My basic measure of temperature is the anomaly (difference to long-term mean.

This shows how after a very hot start to the month it dropped rapidly before gradually building up again to finish the month with an average temperature 0.14C above the long term value.

The next chart shows the comparison of BoM data with the ling term averages for each day.

On this comparison the month ended with the minima 0.69C above average while the maxima worked out to 0.42C below average.

My Weather Station shows a similar pattern, with maxima as usual somewhat higher on many days due to less exposure to afternoon sea breezes.  (But note opening caveat about technology fails!)

Minimum Temperatures

The average minimum temperature for February 2022 was well below the value for January 2022 but above both the value for February 2021 and the average February value.

While the trend line for the time series does slope upwards the low value of r2 shows this not to be significant.  Removing the very low value for 1996 does not increase the value of r2!

Maximum Temperatures

The average maximum temperature was below the average but a little above last year.

The time series chart resembles a cross section through the Andes and as would be expected from such a chart there is no significant trend.  Indeed the regression line of best fit is about as close to flat as could be imagined! 

Having now got at least three WS observations for each month I thought it might be worth exploring a chart of the current month against the average for the weather station alone.  On attempting this, the current year and the average for both months of 2022 were so close the line overlaid each other.  Lets see what happens with March!

Humidity

The month felt quite humid confirmed by average readings for both 0900 and 1500 hrs being well above average for the month.  

Daily values  for those times were also quite high with the 1500 value often being close to the 0900 reading.

Wind

This variable is particularly difficult to assess for the month as 

• readings for my WS and the BoM are rather different, due to the greater exposure of the BoM site; and 
• the readings for the BoM site are missing for some days.

However, looking at the maximum wind gust data available from BoM suggests that the days lost from my WS were not abnormal.  Thus I have taken the average wind run for the 25 days for which WS data is available as a reasonable indicator of windiness.

This suggests an unremarkable month for wind.  Almost exactly average for daily run.  That being said the run of 284 km on 20 February was the 4th longest February run (of 101 readings) but only the 31st longest run (of 1116) runs overall all months in which my WS has been operating.