Monday, January 12, 2009

Cyclone, but not really

For Mr Sunshine's birthday in December I decided to get him a weather station on behalf of the whole family. It has been great. I check it all the time and keep a tally of the rainfall. Mr Sunshine just laughs at my OCD over his birthday gift.
I thought it would be a good gift because in the past he has been a bit obsessive about keeping tabs on the weather. Oh well.
This little electronic machine gives us the barometric pressure, inside and outside temperature and humidity, rainfall, dew point, wind chill factor, wind speed plus date and time. Last night a small (category 1) cyclone crossed the coast on the western side of the peninsula and today it has rained steadily all day.
If you think of the cyclone rotating in a clockwise direction and it is to the west of us and we are on the east coast, it makes sense that the winds we are getting are from the Pacific Ocean side and that is why they are loaded with rain. When cyclones come from the east, we get the wind from the west (overland) and therefore very little or even no rain. That probably doesn't make much sense unless you are interested in cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons or whatever they are called all over the world.
Anyway, bottom line is we've had over 100 mm of rain today and the weather bureau has said we can expect 300 mm by tomorrow(100 mm = 4 ins). Our top wind speed so far has only been about 30 kph (about 18 mph). The really good news is that all this rain causes the temperature to drop and it's only about 22 degrees centigrade outside at present (about 72 farenheit). Just perfect. And most folk around here love rain when we get it because we have a long dry season.
If you have to have a cyclone, Charlotte is definitely one of the better ones.

8 comments:

  1. You need to move your anemometer into a more open area, we were getting winds way faster than 30km. Then again there is nothing but open grassland behind us so maybe it had a better run up to our house.

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  3. The anenometer is on the opposite side of the house from the prevailing wind. Mr Sunshine intends to move it above roof level sometime. He needs to get a round tuit :)

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  4. I WANT A WEATHER STATION!

    My sister (I'm sure anyone who knows my sister's knows exactly which one) asked me last night whether I thought we'd get a cyclone out of this rain. I told her probably not, and she shut me up before I could offer an explanation.

    It sounds like the wind is much much faster at our house. I think that's just because it's running down the wind tunnel between our house and the neighbours' and echoing all the way down.

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  5. Hmmm... I wish I would read my comments before I post them, then I would see I put an apostrophe in sisters and could have deleted it without it frustrating me now.

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  6. I thought we did still get a lot of rain if the cyclone had come in from over the pacific?

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  7. I'm new here! What a great blog :)

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Mr. Sunshine & Grannysaurus

Mr. Sunshine & Grannysaurus

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About Me

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Townsville, Queensland, Australia
I have worked as a Biology lab assistant, Pathology lab assistant, geochem lab assistant, land tenure researcher, hospital and prison chaplain, parish care coordinator and part owner of a small business. I have studied some science (no degrees) and have a theology and a chaplaincy certificate. I still love science of all types and enjoy studying theology. Science and theology belong together. At present I am a work-at-home Grannysaurus.

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