Yet more sky images

 The sun and clouds are doing a pretty good job of spectacular recently.  Following a pleasant pastel sunrise on 13 June, there was an intriguing sunset on that day (the cloud led to 6.4mm of rain) o followed by an colourful sunrise, on 14 June including a moon!

The pastel sunrise, at 0706 hrs.

The sky got very cloudy late in the afternoon but a gap appeared over Karbeethong which was well illuminated by 1636 hrs.

At 1640 I switched to my smaller lens to get a wider view.  Mt Imlay is just out of the frame to the right.

This tales a view continuing to the left (West) of the previous image.

The sunrise on the 14th wasn't so unusual, but still attractive at 0644.

The moon enhances this image.

On the 15th there was a good collection of lenticular clouds (referred to by the Cloud Appreciation Society as 'lennies')  in the general direction of Mount Drummer.  The first one in particular has a good impersonation of a UFO!

A little later they were just nice to look at.

As I expected/hoped sunset was pretty lurid on the 15th.  For those interested, when I zoomed in on the bird it had a clearly forked tail, so it is a fairly close Welcome Swallow rather than a distant raptor (or Pelican)

Sunset 8 June

 After a rather dreary day, with steady rain in the afternoon, a band of clear sky on the horizon gave a spectacular sunset.

Still moderately fit?

When I first went up Genoa Peak there was a sign at the start of the walking saying "Moderate fitness required".  That disappeared at some time on 31 December 2019 and has still not been replaced.  However, I reckon the concept is still relevant as Frances and I were well stuffed by the time got back to the car.  Here is the route (courtesy of eBird).  The distance is perhaps 100m long as I didn't stop right at the furthest point.

Google Earth tells me the car park is 239mAMSL and the highest point is 436m. So the average slope is 1 in 8.8 (or 11.3%).  Of course several of those metres are done on ladders at the top, but it is still a steady ascent.  In fact the slope isn't the hardest work: it is the uneven rock one is walking on!

Here is a view from the track about 300m along.

Parks have done a lot of tidying in the car park and picnic tables.  Clearing the track - rather less: there were about 6 obstacles like this, which were merely annoying.

The first look out gives a good idea of how many ranges are visible: we had expected a sunny day but were disappointed by cloud.  This is looking about WNW.

Looking North the dominant peak is, as expected, Mt Imlay, which is 75% higher than Genoa Peak.  

Looking back from the lookout, there is still work to do!

Once up on top, even with the cloudy skies there is still a nice view to the coast.  Gabo Island is sort of visible beyond Bottom Lake.

This roundel points to a few landmarks.  Interestingly all the details 

A view to the NW from the very top.

Looking at the way down.  Granite boulders and metal stairs.

A close up of the top of the second (of three) stairs.

Some large exposures of granite on the way round the side of the peak.

The colour of the granite: the pink stuff isn't all on Gabo!

Looking out to the West past a granite wall.  The blue line is a panorama on the first lookout naming all the visible mountains.

There were few flowers.  Correa reflexa was well evident, but I thought this solitary Epacris impressa did a good job of brightening the lower slopes.

Celestial images

 The sky was full of good stuff on 6 June.  The first three are photos of the sunrise, using the smaller lens on my camera.

Then the sunset came good around 5 pm.  The first image is a basic shot.

This one has reduced exposure and is closer to what I could see with my eyes.  Possibly overcompensated a bit.

Same settings as before.

Back to basics.

Switch to small lens at widest setting

After dark the moon rose.  Needs a bit of work but shows the clouds well.

May 2023 Weather report

 The promised El Nino has not yet appeared with above median rainfall.  Temperatures over the month as a whole were below mean but there was a very warm patch to finish the month.

Rainfall

We recorded 77.2 mm for the month as a whole.  This is 12.9% above the median fall, and takes the year-to-date total to 382 mm (7.2% above the median year to date).

The daily falls show that nearly all the wet came in the early part of the month.  Most of the rain came in steady falls: no extreme rates to report.

Temperatures

Overall it was a cold month with the anomaly ending at -1.08C.

The chart of temperature extremes shows that the main reason for the outcome was (very) low maxima.

Minimum Temperatures

The average minimum was a little below both the 2022 value and the longer term mean.

The lowest daily minimum was 5.6C, significantly below the long term mean minimum.  It coincided with a maximum also significantly below the average for that variable making that the only Cold Day of the month.  There was one other significantly low minimum, and 2 occurrences of minima significantly above the long term mean.

Maximum temperatures.

The average maximum temperature of 16.45C was well below the previous lowest average maximum (adjusted to make the Historic BoM data more consistent with my Weather Station) of 16.9C.  Looking at the BoM data without adjustment the value for May 2023 was 16.6 C compared with a long term lowest value of 16.1C in 2006).  Either way it was a very low month for maxima.

My WS recorded 2 days with significantly high maxima (shown clearly in the chart under the main heading) but 12 days with a significantly low maximum.

Humidity

The chart for the two standard-time humidities shows a very confused situation with a relatively high proportion of days in which the afternoon reading is higher than the morning value.  I expect this to be a timing effect reflecting when the wind switched to the South or SW.

Looking at history the 9AM reading is well below average while the 3PM reading is well above average.

Wind

The average daily wind run was 91 km.  This is a little below average, with many days less than 100km and only 3 above 15 km.

Tempest data

A friend who lives near the wharf has a weather station connected to the Tempest network.  This provides some additional data items to those available from my Davis.  Two variables I find particularly interesting are covered below.  I need a longer time sereies to attempt any insights from these data.

Lightning strikes

According to material I read on the Weatherflow website these relate to an area 40km radius around the station (while this seems hard to fathom, I note that my looking at Flight Radar shows aircraft visible to my eyesight that are 200+ km away).    There were 52 strikes in May 2023.  The chart shows a time series since this weather station commenced.

Solar radiation

The station also measures solar radiation: a topic of great interest in view of the use of solar radiation to power water heaters and electricity.