Exceptional Australian Heat Wave (click here)
Posted February 5, 2009
For those who track their local temperatures using the Celsius scale, 40 degrees is a daunting number. In early February 2009, residents of southeastern Australia were cringing at their weather forecasts, as predictions of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) meant that a blistering heat wave was continuing.
This map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 (2009) compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008.
The painful truth (click title to entry - thank you)
February 14, 2009
Tony Thompson kicked back, sipping a beer. It was last Saturday and he was oblivious to the convoy hurtling past his front gate as dozens of terrified families fled a satanic inferno that was set to reduce the pretty, high-country town of Marysville to an ashen graveyard with a postcode. He knew a bit about the Victorian bush. Ten years previously, Thompson had survived a fire in the Dandenongs.
Now, he assured the Canadians who had hired a tourist cottage on his 25-hectare farm that the smoke seeping into the valley from the west was a long way off. "Not a problem," he comforted the four tourists who just days earlier had retreated south, to escape the other extreme of the Australian bush - the Queensland floods. "That fire's not coming this way."
Minutes later Thompson's mobile phone rang. The caller was an insistent friend, telling him that if he was going to get out, he needed to go now.
"I said: 'No. I've got three blokes here. We can handle it.' "
With that feisty declaration, Thompson rolled the dice for his effort in what was to become Australia's greatest bushfire disaster - the horrific infernos of last weekend, a new milestone in national grieving in which no iteration of statistics quite conveys the enormity of the tragedy or the combustible fusion of nature's excess with man's shortcomings.
The death toll still stands at 181 - but with seven victims in intensive care and the search for bodies continuing slowly, it will rise....
Northern NSW prepares for floods (click here)
February 14, 2009 - 1:23PM
A record 200mm of rain has fallen in Bourke as the top end of NSW prepares for floods.
The weather bureau has issued a flood watch and a severe weather warning for the area, just days after flooding claimed lives and forced dozens of evacuations in Queensland.
Heavy falls are expected to continue over the central north of NSW on Saturday, followed by a deluge over the mid-north coast.
Bourke experienced the brunt of the storm conditions on Friday night with more than 200mm falling, causing flash flooding in the district, a State Emergency Service spokeswoman said.
But half of the calls made to the emergency service were from people in Sydney's metropolitan area, she said.
"We've had approximately 40 requests for assistance across the state," the spokeswoman told AAP.
"Approximately 20 of those came from the Sydney metropolitan area - they were related to trees down."
There were no injuries reported and no threats to property, but the worst is still to come, she said.
Heavy rain was expected to hit towns such as Walgett, while further south, Tamworth and Inverell could also be affected, the manager of the Bureau of Meteorology's Flood Warning Centre Gordon McKay said.
Heavy rain was also expected on Saturday and Sunday on the mid-north and north coasts, with the area between Coffs Harbour and Kempsey likely to see falls of 150-200mm.
"We expect over the weekend a low pressure cell to develop off the coast of northern NSW, and that's likely to lead to very heavy rainfalls," Mr McKay said.
AAP
