The Weather

[Neferti]

Can't find the original weather thread ....

It is EXTREMELY HOT in Canberra today (37C ATM) and they predict more of the same until the weekend. Thankfully, I have air conditioning. I wandered out to collect the bins earlier and almost expired due to the oppressive heat. However it is DRY HEAT, which is OK and not HUMIDITY which I can't tolerate. Dripping with "sweat" (or perspiring profusely) is definitely not ladylike.

Strangely, we have had some "scattered showers" this Summer so my lawn is still green and not that burnt brown colour it usually is at this time of year. All the plants in my garden have survived, some need pruning though. My lawnman just "mows lawn" and doesn't do gardening ... unfortunately ... the last bloke did all that. Oh well.

[skippy]

Most of summer has been in the mid to high thirties up here and we do get the humity. I can not handle it as well as I used to maybe I need to find a more temperate climate now that I'm older. Funny thing is my son was born here but hates the heat he wants to live in a cold climate. I took him to Canberra last winter and he loved it.

[mantra]

It hit around 39 degrees on the Central Coast today, but feels hotter. It was about 37 yesterday. It's been a long hot and humid Summer. It's bearable at home under fans and surrounded by trees, but going outside or driving is like being in a sauna. I'm looking forward to Autumn next week.

[AiA in Atlanta]

am looking forward to spring here in Atlanta. not that the winter is bad here. actually it is good because it is a mix of really cold days and cool days with some warmish days as well so one isn't trapped by winter like people way up north are. and with a mix like that I can enjoy wearing coats and sweaters and scarves, build a fire in the fireplace, maybe have a little snow that quickly melts and the next week go outside with nothing but a light jacket. Today is about 10 degrees. By the end of next week are looking at 20 degrees. Have had an incredible amount of rain this winter attributed to El Nino ...

[Outlaw Yogi]

Been stinking hot here for quite a while. Had about 3 showers back near Christmas, which put the bush fire out.
(Went for a drive Monday and noticed the bush fire burnt out all the Southern end of the Nat park - nice and green now, but trees still black).

About a month ago it started raining proper, and I got 12 inches in 2 weeks, so the ground got soggy and the grass is knee high again. The muffler on my brush cutter rusted out and fell off. Being a 4 stroke it needs back pressure from the muffler to run properly, so I'm thinking about making a manifold from aluminium to hold on an exhaust pipe made from copper tube, and will have to make it mildly tight/constricting to create back pressure.

Since the rain gave up it's been stinking hot again. My thermometer packed it in a couple of years ago, but when it worked, it wasn't unusual for it to show 38C inside the caravan. It's generally hotter out in the sun, but if I jump in the dam and then sit under a shady tree, it's bearable.
The old bloke who owns the bull dozer I occasionally drive has a weather station which shows temps are generally mid to high 30s.

I used to bitch about how cold it gets in the hills on winter nights, and people thought I was mad for sleeping outside during winter. But as I explained many times, I found it far more comfortable with my back to a hard wood (Iron bark) fire than sleeping in that ice box of a caravan, and I can't have a fire in the caravan.
I acquired (mainly from scrap yards) bits a pieces to build a pot belly stove for the caravan. The plan is/was cut a hole in the wall where the fridge used to be and butt a washing machine body/housing up against that hole so I can access the pot belly from inside the van and not have to cut a hole though the roof for the chimney.
Then I started using a gas ring as a heater and the pot belly project has been on hold.

After this summer I don't think I'll whinge about the cold again.

[mantra]

Since the rain gave up it's been stinking hot again.

It's become very tropical in my area. A couple of decades ago my house looked as though it was built on a sand bank. It was always dry and I had to use bore water to keep anything alive. The last few years it's usually poured after a sweltering day - then a few hours later it's steaming again. Everything is lush and several native grasses have returned. Now I don't have to water anything aside from a few pots around the house.

I used to bitch about how cold it gets in the hills on winter nights, and people thought I was mad for sleeping outside during winter. But as I explained many times, I found it far more comfortable with my back to a hard wood (Iron bark) fire than sleeping in that ice box of a caravan, and I can't have a fire in the caravan.

I don't have any heating in winter and it usually averages around 4-8 degrees in the morning. Outside is always warmer than inside, but it's easier to get warm than it is to stay cool in extremes of temperature.

[Neferti]

Still very hot and dry in Canberra. No sign of a cool change ... or Autumn! They are predicting 33, 30, 31, 31 for the rest of the week and 26 on Sunday with "light rain". That will be a bit of a change, IF it happens! Monday is a public holiday here ... for Canberra Day ... and they reckon it will be 28. I hope Autumn comes soon, I am getting fed up with the heat and it is not cooling down much at night either, so tossing and turning all night. Ah well.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Been hovering around 35C for days now, but that's not the worst of it.
There seems to be a fly plague. Most persistent little bastards I've for a long time.
The only places I've experienced flies in such proportions are Goulburn and Canberra.
I was told it's from all the sheep shit. Coincidentally my next door neighbours have about 30 sheep.
So I don't know if they've blown in from next door or Boxy's place

Big cloud bank moved in this arvo cooling things down, but the flies remain.

[Neferti]

Been hovering around 35C for days now, but that's not the worst of it.
There seems to be a fly plague. Most persistent little bastards I've for a long time.
The only places I've experienced flies in such proportions are Goulburn and Canberra.
I was told it's from all the sheep shit. Coincidentally my next door neighbours have about 30 sheep.
So I don't know if they've blown in from next door or Boxy's place

Big cloud bank moved in this arvo cooling things down, but the flies remain.

I started a thread here donkeys yonks ago entitled "I Saw a Fly" .... they are very rare at my place in Canberra ...

[Outlaw Yogi]

There seems to be a fly plague. Most persistent little bastards I've for a long time.
The only places I've experienced flies in such proportions are Goulburn and Canberra.
I was told it's from all the sheep shit.

I started a thread here donkeys yonks ago entitled "I Saw a Fly" .... they are very rare at my place in Canberra ...

Around 1990-91 I went to Bungendore for a party put on for investors by an eccentric Austrian inventor. His invention worked but looked crude, and my father made it into a marketable product that could be put on the shelf and sold. While there I went into Canberra to a cinema (think I saw Dead poets society).
My father and I stayed at this Bungendore property for a few days, and the swarms of flies were like I'd never experienced before (and my family bred cattle in NSW). I was told it was usually due to all the sheep shit, but this particular year some institute (CSIRO ? or some uni ?) had irradiated and released a million flies. The theory being the irradiated flies would mate but being sterylised no offspring would come and the fly population would ultimately reduce.

In the mid 90s my father had a couple of cattle properties in the southern highlands not too far from Goulburn. The flies there were as the expression goes 'could carry you away'.

The flies currently pestering the Isis-Burnett (Bundy ect) region are really in your face persistent little bastards like those in mid 90s Goulburn.