Latest satellite image. According to Austrlian weather service it is warmer at the poles than over northern border of Australia. Degrees
Celsius Colour
-68 Very pale orange (off-white)
-61 Pale orange
-55 Orange
-47 BRIGHT BRICK-RED
-40 Dull reddish-green
-33 Dull green (red tinge)
-27 Dull green (slightly reddish)
-20 BRIGHT LIGHT GREEN
-12 Medium green (bluish)
-6 Dark Green (blue/green)
+1 Light Blue +8 Medium Blue
+15 Dark Blue
+22 Dark grey/blue
>22 Black


IDW20100
BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY WESTERN AUSTRALIA REGIONAL OFFICEPRIORITY

STRONG WIND WARNINGfor coastal waters between Bremer Bay and EuclaIssued at 11:20 am WST on Saturday, 5 February 2005

Please be aware, wind gusts can be a further 40 percent stronger than theaverages given here, and maximum waves may be up to twice the height.

Situation: A deep heat trough near Hopetoun is expected to move eastwards alongthe south coast during today, reaching Israelite Bay overnight.
Expected strongwinds ahead of and immediately behind the trough.
Bremer Bay to Israelite Bay: NE/N'ly winds 20/30 knots, ahead of a SW'ly 20/30 knots change extending from the west during the day.
Expect SW winds tomoderate below 25 knots overnight.
Seas to 2.0m. Swell to 2.0m.
Israelite Bay to Eucla: SE/NE winds strengthening to 20/30 knots this afternoon.

Expect winds to moderate below 25 knots overnight as winds tend NE to northerly.
Seas to 2m. Swell to 2.0m.

Gale/Storm/Hurricane Warning for Tropical Cyclone for Shipping 1.

IDW2310040:3:1:24:16S117E999:11:00

SECURITEHIGH SEAS WEATHER WARNING FOR METAREA 10 ISSUED BY THEAUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY
TROPICAL CYCLONE WARNINGCENTRE PERTH AT 0224UTC 5 FEBRUARY 2005

GALE WARNING FOR THE WESTERN AREAPlease be aware, wind gusts can be a further 40 percent stronger than theaverages given here, and maximum waves may be up to twice the height.

SITUATION
Tropical low with central pressure 995hPA located at 0200UTCWithin 20 nautical miles of Latitude fifteen decimal five south [15.5S]
Longitude one hundred and seventeen decimal five east [117.5E]moving southwest at 4 knots.

AREA AFFECTED
Within 40 nautical miles of centre in the north eastern quadrant extending towithin 210 nautical miles in the southwest quadrant.

FORECAST
Squally conditions currently exist in the southwest quadrant, and this quadrantwill continue to have the strongest winds as the system intensifies over thenext 24 hours. The low is expected to develop into a tropical cyclone within thenext 12/24 hours, causing rough to very rough seas, moderate swell and 30/45knot winds.

At 1400
UTC 05 February
16.1 south 117.3 east 990hPaAt
0200
UTC 06 February 16.5 south 117.0 east 985hPa

Next warning issued at 0500UTC 05 February 2005
WEATHER PERTH

TROPICAL CYCLONE OUTLOOK

TROPICAL CYCLONE OUTLOOK
FOR THE AREA BETWEEN LONGITUDES 125 EAST - 142 EAST
Issued by the BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY, DARWIN
at 2:15 pm CST Friday 4 February 2005

An active monsoon trough lies across the Gulf of Carpentaria and Timor Sea. A
weak tropical low, 1005 hPa, is situated in the western Gulf of Carpentaria, and
there is the potential for another tropical low to develop off the Kimberley
coast of northwestern Australia. The most likely scenario is for tropical
cyclone formation in the Gulf of Carpentaria late on Sunday or on Monday.

The potential for development of a Tropical Cyclone over the next
few days is estimated to be:

Saturday: low,

Sunday: moderate,

Monday: high.

NOTE: Development Potential is an estimate of the probability of tropical
cyclone development for each day...
Low = 10% or less
Moderate = 20% - 40%,
High = 50% or more.
DARWIN Regional Forecasting Centre.

Did Whale Beaching Foretell Disaster?

The mass of stranded whales and dolphins in Tasmania has been linked to the quake and tsunami that occurred three weeks later. Picture / Reuters
03.02.05by Michael McCarthy

On the internet it is already a spreading legend: did the mass stranding and deaths of whales and dolphins on an Australian beach signal the advent of the earthquake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami?

And did an Indian professor, as a result of the first event, warn of the second?

You might think it's a pretty wacky idea. But it's got currency.

Yet is it true?

What is true is that on December 4, three weeks before the earthquake off Indonesia, an Indian academic, Dr Arunachalam Kumar, professor of anatomy at Kasturba Medical College at Mangalore in Karnataka, posted a note about a recent whale-stranding in Tasmania, and its possible implications, on a "listserve", an e-mail distributor, hosted by Princeton University.

About 120 whales stranded and died in Australia at the end of November and 50 pilot whales died on a Coromandel beach at the same time.

Kumar is a well-known figure in India. An amateur naturalist of some repute and a prolific author, he is a larger-than-life character, frequently in the press. "It is my observation, confirmed over the years, that mass suicides of whales and dolphins that occur sporadically all over the world, are in some way related to change and disturbances in the electromagnetic field co-ordinates and possible realignments of geotectonic plates thereof," he wrote. "Tracking the data and plotting the locales of tremors and earthquakes, I am reasonably certain that major earthquakes usually follow within a week or two of mass breaching of cetacians [sic]. I have noted with alarm, the last week report of such mass deaths of marine mammals in an Australian beachside. I will not be surprised if within a few days a massive quake hits some part of the globe.

The interrelationship between the unusual 'death-wish' of pods of whales and its inevitable aftermath, the earthquake, may need a further impassioned and unbiased looking into.

" There's no doubt that he posted his note on December 4.

To read it in the listserve itself, go to new-lists.princeton.edu/listserv/nathistory-india.html and click on "December 2004".

In reading it, many are likely to experience a rising of the hair on the back of the neck. But the story hasn't remained there. It has been widely reported across India and the net. And, in the telling, the story has grown. On January 10, it surfaced on the discussion board of the electronic version of the British Medical Journal. There, a letter from one Jairaj Kumar Chinthamani, a research fellow in Mangalore, said the professor had predicted the earthquake "almost to the day". He actually said "within a week or two" and "within a few days".

The quake took place three weeks later.

According to Chinthamani, the professor "wrote that he had made a five-year record of dates and locales of whale strandings, plotted their locales, and correlated them to occurrences of upheavals on land or undersea, and had observed a remarkable connection between the events. In fact, Kumar never mentioned anything as precise as a five-year record. But never mind. It would not be surprising if the legend continued to grow until eventually Kumar was regarded as having signalled the breaching on shore of the tsunami itself to the very minute. His original message, though, is intriguing enough.

Yet does it have any substance?

The answer is that it may have some. Scientists are aware of the possible connection between the behaviour of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and the Earth's magnetic field.

"There is thought to be a correlation between some whale strandings and geomagnetic anomalies," says Dr Simon Northridge, of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University, Britain's principal whale and dolphin research centre. "It's certainly out there as a hypothesis."

In fact, the idea was put forward in the late 1980s by Dr Margaret Klinowska, from Cambridge University. Klinowska argued whales navigated partly by following geomagnetic contours, and that in certain circumstance, such as when the contours ran at right angles to the coastline (rather than parallel to it) they could run themselves aground.

The theory is still discussed, and it is a respectable one. But are stranded whales precursors of earthquakes? You won't find a lot of backing for that.

Mark Simmonds is director of science at Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). He has studied strandings in detail because one of the questions most frequently asked of him and the WDCS is why they happen. The main answer is, he says, that most whales are intensely social animals, and act together. If one heads into the beach, the others follow. It may be an accident; sometimes human agency may be partly to blame; sometimes the Earth's magnetic field may play a role.

"But nobody has shown any correlation between whale strandings and earthquakes. If you're saying there is, you would have to present the data to prove your case."

Over to Professor Kumar. His original email strongly implies that he is in possession of such data. But, contacted at his office in Mangalore, he was unable to provide any. Did he have a list of the correlations between previous whale strandings and earthquakes? The correlations in which he had tracked the data and plotted the locales?

"I don't have a lot of these things," he said. "I'm just an avid reader. I watch with particular interest. "

As a science man, I don't want to put these things on paper," he replied. "It would take me a long time to put it right." So Kumar appears to have no evidence at all for backing up his core assertion that cetacean strandings and earthquakes are linked. Yet he undoubtedly did post his solemn warning just three weeks before the biggest earthquake of the past 40 years: "I will not be surprised if within a few days a massive quake hits some part of the globe."

Chance?

Luck?

Science?

Make of it what you will. Plenty of others are.

INDEPENDENT

New Zealand Satellite 2.5.05 

Wellington Airport blanketed in fog for fifth day

05.02.05 10.00am

Wellington Airport is this morning again blanketed by thick fog for the fifth day in a row making the streak the worst in airport staff's memory.

Fog first prevented flights arriving and departing on Tuesday night and since then the airport has been able to open only intermittently during breaks in the fog.

Airport duty manager Stephen Rybinski this morning told NZPA all four international flights scheduled this morning had been able to leave but all other flights in and out had been cancelled after the fog thickened at about 3am. Air New Zealand and Qantas had suspended check-in, Mr Rybinski said.

"There's quite a blanket around the area and it will probably stay until lunchtime." He said the five-day stretch of fog was the worst in his 14 years at the airport and was likely to be a record given the capital's notorious wind.

"Passengers are getting a little upset but obviously there's nothing we can do until that fog clears."

Mr Rybinski said the terminal was quite quiet as most people had chosen to stay home this morning until hearing flights were up and running again. He said no flights had been diverted today -- they had all been cancelled. "It's pretty bad here -- just as bad as yesterday. I don't think there's a lot of wind out there.

Major Centres

Auckland
Rain
27.0°
21.0°

Wellington
Some cloud
23.0°
19.0°

Christchurch
Some cloud
22.0°
18.0°

Hamilton
Some cloud
28.0°
20.0°

Dunedin
Some cloud
23.0°
17.0°


National Summary

Updated Saturday 05 Feb 2:59PM

Northland:
Humid, with occasional rain and some heavy falls.

In the east from Auckland to Gisborne, also Taupo:
Mostly cloudy with patchy rain.

In the west from Waitomo to Wellington, also Taihape:
Fine apart from cloudy periods. Isolated showers till tonight north of Kapiti Coast, possibly with thunderstorms north of Palmerston North.

Hawkes Bay and Wairarapa:
Extensive low cloud or fog, with areas of drizzle near the coast.

Buller and northern Westland:
Mostly cloudy with a few showers.

Southern Westland and Fiordland:
Fine at first apart from coastal fog. Rain developing about Fiordland overnight and spreading north during Sunday.

Nelson, Marlborough and Canterbury:
Mainly fine apart from areas of low cloud or fog along the east coast. A few showers about the ranges till this evening, possibly with thunderstorms, and again from midday Sunday.

Otago and Southland:
Fine at first apart from low cloud near the coast. Scattered rain developing Sunday.

Chatham Islands:
Low cloud or fog, with drizzle at times.

National Long Range Forecast

Updated Saturday 05 Feb 1:59PM

Monday
North Island, rain spreading over most of the Island from the northwest but remaining dry in the southeast. South Island, rain in the west, with a few heavy falls possible, and some rain or showers spreading to most remaining areas, some heavy showers in the afternoon south of Christchurch.

Tuesday
Some rain or showers over most of the country, becoming fine in the south of the South Island.

Wednesday
Fine or becoming fine in most places. However, some afternoon showers in inland North Island areas, and cloud increasing in the west of the South Island, with some rain south of the Glaciers.

The weather in Antarctica is (Crystal Ice Chime) is:

Scott Base
Some cloud
-3.0°
Updated Saturday 05 Feb 3:59PM

European African Satellite 2.4.05 

Western Hemisphere Satellite 2.4.05 

Heat origins over Indonesia at the site of the earthquake 12.26.04. No conclusions made regarding terrestrial distributions post event and the effect on climate change. It remains waning summer, approaching autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the Fall Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere remains 45 days away on March 21, 2005. The Equinox is when the sun passes over the equator. This is a significant climate event.

Massive heat movements from the equator to Antarctic in teh Southern Hemisphere. The anomally in the Northern Hemisphere continues from yesterday. 

Noted today incredibly intense weather centers northern boundary, seem heat intensive from the equator. 

Call this summer? The weather turns feral

The weather outside is frightful ... National Parks field office Steve Carter battles fierce winds through the snow at Perisher Valley. The unusual weather that turned summer into winter in eastern Australia had meteorologists gasping, with some describing it as among the most extraordinary they had witnessed.
Photo: Chris Lane


Visitors in February to Charlotte Pass ski resort could normally expect to go hiking on the grassy mountain slopes and enjoy a drink afterwards on their chalet balcony in the sun.

But yesterday, people had to huddle inside to avoid the blizzards and freezing temperatures.

Manager of the Stillwell Lodge, Stephen Young, said visibility was low, driving was hazardous and the village roads were covered in 15 centimetres of snow. "You wouldn't want to go out there now for a cocktail," he said.

The unusual weather that turned summer into winter in eastern Australia also had meteorologists gasping, with some describing it as among the most extraordinary they had witnessed.

Melbourne was under water after experiencing the heaviest rainfall in 24 hours since records began in 1856. Huge waves in Bass Strait smashed windows on a ferry on its way to Tasmania. And the cold snap across NSW saw February records for minimum overnight temperatures broken in many country towns.

In Sydney, almost all the damage to property was caused by heavy rain and wind, which felled trees and lifted roofs. Around Gosford the damage was caused by hail, smashing skylights and tiles.

"Same day, same weather, and yet we've got something quite dramatically different not that far apart," a State Emergency Service spokesman said.

A senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology, Elly Spark, said the cause of the havoc, a low-pressure system that developed late on Wednesday to the east of Bass Strait, was extremely intense, equivalent to a tropical cyclone.

"It intensified very rapidly and has been bringing horrendous winds and snow. You have a winter-type situation in the middle of February."

Winds in excess of 100kmh buffeted the Snowy Mountains with gusts more than 120kmh.

While February snowfalls in the Victorian ski resorts were not unheard of, dumps of 12centimetres were unusual, Ms Spark said. "It's an amazing situation."

The bureau's climate technical officer, Mike De Salis, said the low was also unusual in that it moved westward, rather than out to sea, so it ended up right on top of Melbourne. "It deepened as it went, picking up moisture from Bass Strait and sucking it in."

Cold air from the low pressure system caused light snow to fall yesterday on the ranges near Canberra and sleet was reported in the capital as temperatures plummeted. Snow also fell at Thredbo and Perisher ski resorts where the temperature was below minus 1.

There have only been five February snowfalls in Perisher Valley in 29 years of records, with the last in 1998, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

A forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, Ward Rooney, said he had never seen a storm like the one that hit Melbourne.

It dumped 120 millimetres of rain in the 24 hours to 9am yesterday, causing flooding, chaos and the diversion of some flights. Melbourne's average February rainfall is 45.8 mm.

Huge seas battered the Spirit of Tasmania I ferry which had to return to Melbourne.

Judy Archer, from Melbourne, said the voyage had been terrifying. "The waves were just enormous, just enormous. I was on the bunk and I could feel my body sort of lifting up in the air and crash down again," she told reporters.

In NSW, the SES received 2750 calls for assistance in the 24 hours to 4pm yesterday, most from the Ryde, Baulkham Hills and Gosford areas and the Southern Highlands.

On the South Coast, seven children and a teacher from Ulladulla Primary School were taken to hospital with minor injuries after a tree fell on their demountable classroom.

In NSW, Hay had its coldest February day ever on Wednesday, with a maximum of 13 degrees, rather than the average of 33 degrees for this time of year. Records for minimum overnight temperatures in February were broken in many country towns such as Coonabarabran, where the mercury fell to 3.6 degrees (previous record minimum: 5.6 degrees in 1993) and Condobolin, where it was a chilly 5 degrees (previous record: 6.6 degrees in 1985).

There was also good news: dam levels in the Sydney catchment have risen 0.6 percentage points this week to 42.7 per cent. The Warragamba catchment received 70 millimetres of rain this week.

A carport roof shredded by hail in Gosford.
Photo:Kaylene McGrath
 

The day the Earth was squeezed and the pole shifted

Tsunami theories range from the constructive to the crackpot, John Huxley discovers.

More than a month after the world's most devastating tsunami, the aftershocks keep coming. Planet Earth is still reverberating, "ringing like a bell". And the waters of the Indian Ocean continue to slosh between the west coast of Australia and the distant east coast of Africa.

Scientists are also convinced that the huge earthquake that preceded the tsunami shifted the North Pole, altered the planet's shape and speeded its rotation, decreasing the length of the day - although the precise magnitude of such changes is still being calculated.

These are just a few of the findings being made by scientists around the world investigating the event with the aid of unprecedented data, witness accounts and theories ranging from the constructive to the crackpot, the mainstream to the mythological.

"A great deal remains to be learned," says Herb McQueen, from the Australian National University in Canberra.
"The human impact of this particular event has been a terrible tragedy but geoscientists have been anticipating a big earthquake like this since the last ones in the 1960s. It is the first to have been measured with the new generation of sophisticated technology."

Dr McQueen, who has been measuring vibrations of the earth on a gravity meter in a fireproof basement beneath Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra, likens the disaster to a light suddenly flashing in a dark room. "It's only a quick glimpse. But especially with sensitive networks of measuring instruments in place round the world, such brief flashes provide much about what we know about the structure of our planet."

In terms of the planet, Dr McQueen compares the difference between the magnitude 9.0 quake and more common large quakes to "tapping a bell with a spoon and belting it with a hammer".

The oscillations "would not throw people out of their chairs", being about one-tenth of a millimetre of vertical motion, but they continue long after the event.

So, too, does the movement of the Indian Ocean. "It's almost stopped but the ocean does slosh around for quite a while," explained John Church, a CSIRO climate-change expert monitoring tidal gauge data from around the world. "It's like tossing a big pebble in a pond ... The topography of the oceans is complex and the effects can be far-reaching and unexpected," he said, pointing to the destruction of bird colonies on islands in the mid-South Atlantic. This is a further indication of the quake's earth-shaking significance.

NASA scientists have calculated the earthquake probably shifted the "mean North Pole" about 2.5 centimetres eastwards, reduced the earth's oblateness (its tendency to flatten on the top and bulge at the equator) and changed its rotation. Like a spinning skater drawing their arms closer to the body, the earth began to spin faster, reducing the length of the day by an estimated 2.69 microseconds (a microsecond is a millionth of a second). Too small to notice, but big enough to prompt some observers to joke that pay rates should be cut in line with the reduction in working hours.

Paul Tregoning, a geophysicist at the ANU, says the quake caused big movements in the earth's crust. He hopes to establish just how big by using data from GPS (global positioning system) recorders throughout Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Early indications suggest the islands of Sumatra and parts of the Malay Peninsula moved to the south-west, while the underlying, oceanic plate moved to the north-east.

Geoscience Australia continues to monitor the aftershocks. Like the ANU's earth sciences team, the agency has been sifting reports of unusual post-tsunami activity by Australians, both amateur and professional.


Last week, on Radio National, the seismologist Mark Leonard addressed reports from the Northern Territory of the level of water rising and falling in a Rum Jungle swimming hole at the time of the earthquake. "Yes, quite credible. The water in the aquifer may be moving in and out of gaps as the earth's crust rose and fell."

This week he answered queries about planetary alignments, concurrent sunspot activity, and about the skittishness or otherwise of animals at the time of the quake (which may, indeed, be more sensitive to the initial wave activity that precedes the damaging, secondary waves).

But some calls, he admits, were fanciful. "A Sydney psychic rang to say that she had started feeling vibrations about the time of the earthquake. She rang back later in a panic to warn us that the vibrations had started again."

Such public reaction - reflected in the current circulation of extravagant conspiracy theories blaming the earthquake on everything from God's displeasure with man to nuclear weapons testing - are not altogether surprising.

Just as scientists have been studying ancient myths in the hope of understanding past events such as tsunami, so sociologists recognise that myth-making is a way in which humans confront the incomprehensible.

The Palestinian Security Force already exists. The funding Bush is sending via Rice will increase the voracity of the Palestinian Military not more security for Israel. 

Six soldiers wounded in clashes

The Palestinian Authority is making 'wild' demands regarding the release of prisoners. Prime Minister Sharon just released some militants in good faith regardless of the crimes of these extremists. Ultimately, the goal of Mazen is to have Marwan Barghouthi, the Hamas member currently jailed in Israel released to eventually run Palestine. There is already a Hamas stronghold in the local elections, Barghouthi is the completion of their plans and the funding from the USA will be used for military escalation against Israel and not the civil purposes leading to improved quality of life for the Palestinian people.

The rhetoric of Marwan Barghouthi is full of hatred and victimization. Occupied Jerusalem - A Palestinian presidential hopeful on Wednesday accused Israel of "disrupting and interfering with" the upcoming Palestinian elections, slated for 9 January.Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent independent candidate, said during a press conference in Ramallah that Israel was not allowing candidates freedom of movement within the West Bank and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

... Barghouthi also indirectly accused unnamed Arab countries of interfering in the Palestinian elections."There are certain sides that have already declared the winner even before the organization of the elections.

"Barghouthi pointed out that the international community as well as Israel were giving Fatah's official candidate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) preferential treatment, which he said constituted a tacit interference in the election process."

He can travel both inside and outside Palestine unfettered, but I can't reach Gaza."Meanwhile, jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi has given more indications that he may change his mind regarding his candidacy for PA President.

..............................................

Every time there has been a release of prisoners from Israel jails more deaths of Isrealis occur. It happens without fail. And now the wild demands of Mazen just takes the cake, as if the Palestinians in Israeli jails could never be guilty of the very crimes they are charged regardless of the fair hearings they have received.

Palestinians reject Israeli offer to release prisoners

The Palestinians on Thursday rejected an Israeli offer to release 900 prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, calling the proposal "insulting." \\

........................................

It is not realistic to believe there is security enough in Palestine to reassure Israel they are safe from the violence of Hamas or any other extremist groups. If the Palestines cannot accept Israel's offer to release the prisoners offered then leave them all in jail and assume those recently released will be back where they belong, IN AN ISRAELI PRISON !!