Anatomy of a storm

Last evening I happened to glance at my lightning tracker app and it seemed that Gotterdammerung was heading our way.

This appeared to be confirmed by the Weatherzone radar.

However nothing arrived, nor seemed likely around 0500 hrs.   A few strikes somewhere near Albury.

Radar image also boring.

Around 1500hrs on 12th there were a few rumbles heard to the NW.  Blitzortung showed a steady  line of flangs headed straight towards us.  This is 1520 hrs.

By 1528 it was getting very close.  White circles are strikes within the last 20 minutes, white crosses 20 - 40 minutes yellow cross 40 -60 and orange  60-80 minutes.

By 1535 the strikes had moved across to the Howe Flat with 16 strikes in the last 40 minutes.

My weather station recorded 10.8 mm at a rate of 63 mm/hr.  The peak rate was 164 mm per hour at which the gutters gave up the struggle.  In the 20 months we have lived here I have only had 4 rain rates higher than this!

 Showing the "hit or miss" of storm cells the BoM site at the airport recorded 2.8 mm and Gabo Is 1.0 mm.  A private WS in town has recorded 8.89 mm. 

The Victorian Weather radar shows another storm heading in this general direction but it may go to the North.
 

Exciting Orchids

 An orchid expert friend called in to show us some orchids to be preserved for Herbarium records.  Note that in each case there a number of specimens left in the ground.  

The first is Calochilus pulchellus only known (until now) from Jervis Bay.  This specimen was found in a Grass Tree Swamp well West of the NSW/VIC border and has caused much excitement in the Victorian orchid world.

It is thought that this species seems to only flower after fire so the New Year fire probably opened up the Xanthorrhoeas enough for it to emerge.  Will it flower again in 2021?

The next three are Prasophyllum species 'Noorinbee' which occurs in that locality.  It is yet to be formally described , which is why these specimens were collected.

White-fronted Chats

 I realise it's been 5 days since I posted!  Not sure why.

We went to Bastion Point today and it was quiet wader-wise.  There is so much exposed sand they could have gone exploring further inland.  While the Mouth looked wide it was clear that there is a lot of sand just offshore and a very narrow passage on the inland side: getting a boat out would need a lot of skill and/or some luck and/or a powerful motor.

As we came back we came across 4 White-fronted Chats.  The demographics as I interpret them are:

2 Adult Males

1 adult female

... and (lower bird) a juvenile of unknown sex (together with one of the males above).

The juvenile suggests that they bred somewhere in the vicinity but a bit tenuous to report as a breeding record.

Some animal pix

Walking the Casuarina track on 4 November (inter alia to escape the depressing news from the USA) we spotted an attractive lizard.  Despite browsing "Reptiles of Victoria " and lacking the details of scale shapes needed to use their otherwise excellent keys I haven't been able to put a name to it.

An interesting dragonfly decided to come along for a ride.  No idea of ID below sub-Order Anisoptera.

For those interested, the t-shirt was a gift from my daughter and reads "GRUMPA: like a regular grandpa, but grumpier."

Also, good to see the bridge has been rebuilt.

An amazing orchid day

This covers a day of exploring a few sites around the Mallacoota area. 

We began with a mass display of the purple donkey orchid, Diuris punctata. 

Unlike the poor, its OK to look down on orchids!

This gives an idea of the quantity of the flowers in the colony.

We also found 1 Diuris sulphurea, included for completeness.

We now get into the genus Prasophyllum.  Oh dear, oh dear: they respond well to fire so there were many many plants in flower but trying to ID them is in many cases beyond me.  I think this is P. brevilabre.  At least 100s of this species.

Now for mysteries.  Suggestions welcome.  They were all modest in size - perhaps 30 cm tall - and scattered through the area.  Although I thought there were three species an expert has advised that they are all various forms of P. appendiculatum

 

I am able to identify this as P. sylvestre as we went searching for this, following up directions for the plants.

We now get into orchids loved by their mothers (as in "Only their mother could love them.)  Again 100s of Microtis in a heathy area and I think the labellum says M. unifolia.  They were quite large - for Microtis - getting up to about 20 cm. 

We found a few Thelymitra (Sun Orchids) in a heath area.  I can't put a name to this one, which is a smaller flower than the Spotted Sun Orchid types.

We couldn't identify this is the field and searching The Book on getting home has suggested Thelymitra brevifolia.  It is astonishing that the bright red column isn't a clear distinguishing feature

Here is a very poor picture of the whole plant, although  the thin leaf doesn't show well (as it didn't in the field amongst all the grass etc).

After at least 2 months of searching, and checking known sites, we finally found some Little Flying Duck Orchids  Paracaleana minor.

I was a little surprised to find that this has had its Genus renamed, from Caleana to Paracaleana.  Then I looked at the leaf which is very different to that of the ubiquitous Large Flying Duck and agreed that a change was warranted.

While photographing the Little Quackers we were told of an asparagus looking plant nearby so went to check it out.

Clearly a Dipodium sp and as it is early i the season I suspect D. roseum

One of the heath areas had a very good crop of Callistemon citrinus.

Some detail.

Gompholobium huegelii (again)

Lobelia anceps

A moth being uncooperative as usual.

This Jacky Winter stayed in this position for about 5 minutes singing its heart out.

October 2010 Weather Report

 In summary a warm and wet month, which is to be expected with La Nina being designated.  In fact, looking at increased rainfall as the key impact of La Nina (and disregarding a few trivia such as Normal Distributions) this month is 2 SD above mean and thus definitely in La Vieja - the Old Female,different to El Nino in both age and sex.

Rainfall

We totaled 130.6 mm for the month.  This is significantly above last year and the median.

There were non-trivial (ie >0.2 mm) amounts of rain on 14 days in the month.  (In another context a meteorologist noted that towards the end of the month Canberra had rain on 10 consecutive days: a record run.)  None of the falls were dramatically heavy - and most of the higher (deeper?) accumulations were very gentle, steady falls.

The pro-rata estimate for the year is at 1029 mm.

The actual fall to the end of October was 856 mm which is greater than 19 of the 41 annual totals for Mallacoota.  So definitely a soggy month/year.

Temperatures

My core measure of overall temperatures is the difference between the average daily temperature and the long term average.  Both come from the BoM site.  The overall result for October was +1.37C and largely due to above average minima: the re were below average maxima on 18/31 days.  The chart shows the progress of the anomaly through the month.

My second overall measure is to show the daily temperature extremes from my Weather Station.  It clearly shows the very hot days at the start of the month.

Minimum Temperatures

The average minimum temperature from my weather station (12.27C almost identical to the 12.2C recorded by BoM)  was well above both October 2019 and the long term average for the month.  In part this appears to be due to the continual presence of clouds, not allowing overnight cooling.

This average is the second highest recorded, being topped only by 2015.

Maximum Temperatures

The average maximum at my Weather Station (21.13C vs 19.7 from the BoM) was well above the past.  

In part this reflects the frequent impact of a cooling sea breeze on the BoM site.  Looking at the maximum component of the calculation to arrive at the anomaly shows that the BoM recorded 18 days in which the maximum temperature was lower than the average for that day of the month.  However due mainly to the two very warm days of 3 and 4 October even the BoM average for the month was .5 above the long term value.

The BoM maximum, on 3 October, of 33.8C was the 5th highest maximum recorded for a day in October.

Humidity

The daily pattern for the 2 standard rimes is rather strange with the series showing very similar values.  Again I relate this to the considerable cloudiness of the month.

The value I am using as the long term average is some historic BoM data so is really only useful to give an annual pattern.  I am surprised that my readings appear to be consistently higher than the BoM series: looking at the values for October values for both standard times have correlation coefficients of ~0.94 and the average value over the month is close (especially for the 1500 series) .

The 0900 series is very close to 2019+ but above average. 

In contrast the 1500 series is well up on 2019 and average.  Cloudiness again?

Wind

There were some quite strongly windy days with runs of more than 200km ...

 

... but overall it was less windy than 2019 and the adjusted BoM average.

The final aspect of the wind is the direction it comes from.  In the past I have done this through a pie chart, as I like the idea of a circle matching the compass.  However it is messy as the slices of the pie vary in width with the number of cases.  (I realise that what I want is a chart in which the slices are of equal width, but the length of the bar indicates the number of cases.  I cant find such a chart in Excel's offerings.)  As a change I have compiled a column chart showing the number of observations of the the direction of the wind at the hourly reading times and the direction of each strongest gust.

I shall ponder this form of presentation a little more.