Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category

Snow!


04 Aug

Posted in Nathan the preschooler, Toby's third year, Travel, Vic, Weather | No Comments »

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On Sunday last week we decided to see if we could find some snow. Snow was forecast down to 1000 metres, and Mount Donna Buang is 1250 metres high and only 1.5 hours drive from us. We packed all our warmest clothes and headed off with lunch including some soup in the new thermos I got for my birthday.

We didn’t see any sign of snow until we were practically at the top and finally we saw a sprinkling of snow on the ground. It was quite cold, but with his beanie, scarf, waterproof mittens, raincoat with attached fleece vest and gumboots, Nathan was as warm as toast. He had so much fun and didn’t want to to get back into the car. In contrast, I was feeling pretty cold and wishing I had gloves, and Toby was really cranky about being out in the snow….until the very end when he just wanted to keep eating it.

We had our warm soup and sandwiches for our second lunch. We sat in the shelter on top of Mount Donna Buang where it was marginally warmer while it snowed. The snow showers made everything white, but it didn’t take long for most of the snow to disappear, leaving just a thin sprinkling on the ground.

We ended up going up the mountain twice, taking a trip to nearby reservoir in between. We didn’t plan to go back up until we were on our way home and it was raining quite heavily, so we went back up to see how white it was.

We had a lot of fun, but it is quite clear that Andrew and I need some gloves and I need warmer jumpers if we plan to spend any time in snow.

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Too hot to sleep


02 Jan

Posted in Melbourne, Nathan the preschooler, Toby's third year, Weather | No Comments »

Yep, definitely too hot. The kids have both stayed up late the last couple of nights because they just wouldn’t go to sleep….and even then it was a battle to get them to sleep! It took us all night to get them to sleep and it was the same last night too. Anyway, it’s midnight now, kids are in bed, it is still 32 degrees in the house and not much cooler outside. Blah. But time for me to sleep now.

Weather Station


21 Jan

Posted in Melbourne, Weather | 1 Comment »

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We recently set up a little weather station, with the data being uploaded in real time to a website (Andrew set it all up). I think we currently have the data being collected every minute, and we can get nice little graphs of the data. The most recent measurements are shown in the sidebar of my blog. We are measuring inside and outside temperatures, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, wind gusts, and rainfall. It also calculates a wind chill factor when the temperature is less than 10 degrees. It’s great…though we have learned to position the Netbook it is attached to so that it doesnt blow hot air on the inside temperature sensor!

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Rain gauge

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Wind speed and direction

Sunny days


25 Dec

Posted in Camping, Nathan's third year, NSW, Toby's second year, Weather | No Comments »

Thankfully the bitterly cold winds have gone, as well as the rain and the cold. Tuesday was our first sunny day. We went for a walk along the Bullocks Track, with Nathan riding his bike. It was about a 4 km return trip, but Nathan got tired and wanted to be carried some of
the way back from the hut.

Wednesday was a very sunny day, so we went in the chairlift from Thredbo to
the Thredbo Top Station. Nathan had fun on it, and then he walked the entire 2 km to Kosciuszko Lookout and back again. I have done the walk many times, but the snow that was lying around really made it different. There were still a couple of snow drifts across the
path as well. It really was spectacular.

Thursday we dropped in at Charlottes Pass again to see if there was any snow left there, but there wasn’t. We had planned to walk a bit along one of the walking tracks there, but since the day started off quite windy we aborted and went for a swim at the pool in Jindabyne instead. We were really feeling the need for a wash, but the Thredbo River, which runs through the campsite, is a lot too cold to be appealing.

Yesterday was another perfect day for walking, so we took the kids on the Porcupine Track. It was nearly 3 km to Porcupine Rocks where there’d is a lovely view of the Thredbo valley. Nathan walked the entire way there and back again, carrying his backpack which contained his water bottle, a sandwich, his jumper, Toby’s jumper (Nathan insisted he carry it), and some sultanas and popcorn that we popped yesterday. Toby, on the other hand, slept on my back almost the entire way.


On the Bullocks Track


Carrying both Nathan and Toby on the Bullocks track


Andrew and Nathan walking to Kosciuszko lookout from the chairlift


Nathan modifying a snowman someone made at Kosciuszko lookout. He decided it needed boobies and 4 ears.


Nathan at Porcupine Rocks


Too tired to sit up to eat sultanas at Porcupine Rocks


There are lots of flowers around

Snow


20 Dec

Posted in Nathan's third year, NSW, Toby's first year, Travel, Weather | No Comments »

All night we could hear rain on the tent, and this morning the peaks of the hills around the camp site were covered in snow. We made our second trip to Charlottes Pass in two days, but today we found ankle-deep snow, mid-calf deep in places, and more snow falling. Nathan had a ball. It was hard to get him back into the car and out of the cold. For Toby it was very serious business which became unbearable for him when the wind blew, even though he was warm in many layers of clothes and snuggled in the mei tei on Mummy’s front.

Camping holiday: rain, hail and sleet


19 Dec

Posted in Nathan's third year, NSW, Toby's first year, Travel, Weather | No Comments »

Before deciding to head to the mountains for our camping holiday, we did check the 28 day forecast and there was a low possibility of rain for yesterday and a medium possibility for today. Unfortunately the reality of the current weather and short term forecasts is that it is looking more like we may have 3 dry days out of the 8 we are in the mountains. It’s just a good thing that Andrew and I quite enjoy camping in the rain…at least now that we have the ‘taj mahal’ of tents….but two small kids are challenging in inclement weather. Still, it’s all good as long as we can keep Nathan from (literally) bouncing off the walls of the tent, waking Toby when asleep, keep him from playing with the torches so much that the batteries go flat, stop him from squirting sunscreen or toothpaste or lip balm all over himself and everything else in the tent (we just found that the tent has high pockets so that will help keep small things out of reach) amongst other things, then all is good. The only problem we have with Toby is that he doesn’t have a rain coat, so with the wind and cold it is hard to keep him warm outside the tent.

Eh, the weather could be better but it is still nice here.

Camping

Dust Storm Sunrise


23 Sep

Posted in Mascot Living, Weather | 1 Comment »

The radiant red of a dust storm during sunrise this morning made for an amazing spectacle!  These are photos that Andrew took from inside our flat….just before Nathan and I woke up!

Storms and humidity


06 Dec

Posted in Mascot Living, Weather | No Comments »

This photograph was taken on Monday night from the top of our building.  Dark clouds and lightening has been a common sight in the evenings lately.  There has also been a lot of rain coinciding with the dark clouds, resulting in high humidity.  Thankfully it hasn’t been terribly hot during the day, but the humidity is really making it uncomfortable.  I feel like I never stop sweating these days!!

Weekend of chocolate


18 Jun

Posted in Food, Friends, Weather | No Comments »

I’ve dubbed this past weekend the ‘weekend of chocolate’. I think I’ve eaten more chocolate in the last 72 hours than I normally eat in an entire year.

It all started with the arrival of my friend Stephanie who came to visit from Melbourne for the weekend. She arrived on Thursday night, complete with two large blocks of Cadbury’s chocolate. Normally I don’t have chocolate in the house, so it was a real treat to have blocks of chocolate. I had Friday off work to spend with Steph, but unfortunately the weather ruined our plans. It wasn’t as bad as last weekend, but it still severely restricted our options. So, instead of going out for walks and taking photographs, we stayed inside on Friday. I decided to make banana muffins and Steph decided that they had to have choc chips in them. The shop at the front of the complex had choc chips, so that sealed the deal and they were added to the mix.

So the chocolate blocks and the choc-banana muffins were devoured over the weekend. Saturday, with flash flooding still being forecast and lots of roads impassable due to fallen trees, we decided that our safest bet would be to stay home. None of us really wanted to go out walking around in the storms anyway. Because we’d stayed home, Andrew decided that he really should go and play hockey. So Steph and I dropped him off at the ground soon after 3 pm and we went for a drive. We went to a lookout on Prince of Wales drive which looked out over Botany Bay entrance, and then we drove to La Perouse to go for a walk on Bare Island. However, once we got there the rain started pelting down on us with strong winds driving it sideways, so we ran back to the car and sat there for a while waiting for it to ease, but it didn’t.

We decided to see if the boys were still playing hockey in this weather and drove back to the hockey ground. They’d been playing for about half an hour when we got there and the ground was almost flooded. The ball didn’t go far when they hit it, being slowed down by all the water. It was the first time I’d seen them running faster than the ball could be hit! The rain kept coming in storms with a few minutes between. I couldn’t believe that they played on, but they did. At half time Andrew’s team was up 1/0 and they’d wanted to call it quits, but the other team didn’t want to and so they played the entire game through the storms and finally lost 1/2. The players in the next game weren’t so tough, and their match was called off. I really don’t blame them, I wouldn’t have wanted to go out there and play either! We took a saturated Andrew home to dry off and warm up.

Sunday there was still rain forecast, but we thought it might not be as bad as the last two days, so we went into the city. We wandered around Hyde Park, went on the monorail, browsed Paddy’s Market and ended up in China Town for a yum cha lunch. Then we stopped at the Lindt place that Andrew and I saw last time we were in the city together. Andrew had a coffee, Steph had a hot chocolate and I had an iced mocca. We chose a little chocolate each to have with our drinks. It was all so chocolatey and sweet!! The photos above are from our afternoon tea at Lindt.

From there it was down to the Rocks area and the Opera House, and we caught the train home from Circular Quay. It was trying to rain by that stage but it was really only spitting, so it didn’t slow us down! We dropped Steph off at the airport at around 6 pm.

It was a nice weekend, and great to see Steph. We need the rain, and apparently some of it has fallen in the right place to help our parched dams. But it really did restrict our weekend movements.

Storms


13 Jun

Posted in Weather | 1 Comment »

 Maroubra beach clean-up

The weather in Sydney last Friday and Saturday was atrocious. Strong winds and seas caused a ship carrying a load of coal to run aground near Newcastle.  Heavy rainfall and flooded creeks caused a huge hole, some 30 metres deep and 10 metres wide, to open up on the Pacific Highway and into which one car disappeared.  Both the car and the bodies of the occupants were found later.  Flooding in the Hunter Valley and Newcastle areas, by all reports, was severe.  Strong winds brought down trees that cut power lines, leaving hundreds of thousands of people between Newcastle and Sydney without electricity.  The economic cost of the disaster has been suggested to be around $1 billion.  Warnings on Saturday informed us that it was safer to stay home that day, if possible. As far as the weather was concerned at our place, it was windy and wet and perfect for staying home and making changes to my thesis. 

Andrew glimpsed a shot of Maroubra beach on the TV news on Saturday evening, so on Monday when we were doing our weekly shopping over that way we decided to pop down to the beach to see what it looked like.  Andrew said that on the news there were photos of sand piled up against the Maroubra pub, having been blown there by the strong winds. 

Although the sand had gone from infront of the pub and the road, there was sand covering the grass and all the walkways and steps.  In some places, where it piled up against a solid wall, it looked to be almost a metre deep!  Andrew took the photo of the little machine that was a sort of cross between a front end loader and a street sweeper.  It swept the sand from the footpath into the front bucket, and then relocated it to the beach.  It looked to me like it would take weeks to clear the sand from all the concrete areas of the beach-front using this method!

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