OT: Weather in the east !

Here it is, I'm blowing it your way whhooosssshhhhh !! It's 83 degrees, humidity 63% and our first of this afternoon's predicted thunderstorms has just stopped. Now the wind is picking up and I don't think we're through with rain for tonight.

Let's hear it for normal weather this year.

L

I've told you before, if you want to come out here to thaw out in March, you're always welcome.

It's 9:46 p.m. right now in Ontario. We just came out of the Regent Theatre where we saw a hilarious performance of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)". It was dry when we went in, but 2 hours later there its ice pellets. It doesn't look as if we'll get the freezing rain here, although they may in Ottawa.

Glad I convinced the DH to take the car even if it normally is only a 15 minute walk.

Enjoy.

MargW

Was it the Reduced Shakespeare Company doing it? We saw "all the great books" last year. The guys are hilarious indeed.

It's storming, with a tornado watch & flood watch here. Weird. But, of course, DH is out reffing some men's league hockey game that started around

1. Hope the roads aren't too awful for his way home.

Ellice

So do I

Cheryl The winter weary

Noooooooooooo! We've just had a most glorious succession of lovely cool days. We don't want the heat: you can have it! Bring on winter!

Sunday, it was 77 and shorts weather. Monday cold, damp and dreary, with predictions of major storm overnight. Tuesday, 12" of snow 100 miles east of here - 3" 30 miles south - and we were sunny and dry all day. Today, 50.

I am ready for some normal weather too. . . .

Linda in Missouri, where this year, it really IS true that if you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes

They have the same saying around here, only wait two minutes !

It is supposed to zoom up to 9 deg before the day is out, which will melt the coating of ice. I guess I had to give thanks that I no longer had to get to work, sounded like it was hell for everyone. A friend lost power but it is now back on.

You are lucky, Trish. They have cancelled global warming. Furthermore, you have been getting some much needed rain in Australia, which is connected to the idea that global temperatures are cooling. I understand there is significant water flowing in the Murray/Darling basin.

Oh yes! And there's significant water in our local dams (Glenbawn, Grahamstown and Chichester) at last! Y'know, it makes such a wonderful difference to see green grass and fat cattle instead of yellowed, dying grass and skeletons! There are still plenty of places inland which haven't yet received adequate rain, but at least there's been *some*thing.

The Darling River has been in major serious trouble for a long while. The wholesale removal of trees has caused the water table to be seriously stuffed up. That is, the water table has risen owing to the negative impact of missing trees (whose roots keep the water level

*down* close to the bedrock or aquifers where it belongs). Considering much of inland Australia gets its water from the Great Artesian Basin (a massive aquifer or water-holding bedrock), this is a serious phenomenon!

Along with the rising water table, you get dissolved salts being deposited above ground and crystallising there. This, of course, means salty soil in which hardly anything will grow! The effect on the Darling River (our largest) has been inestimable. Great swathes of its length have been succumbing to eutrophication (loss of oxygen owing to slowed flow and increase in dissolved salts and other pollutants). Blue-green algae are proliferating where they have never been recorded before and stock-loss has been severe as a result.

A large effect has been seen on the move of inland animal and bird species toward the coasts. Thus, I'm seeing enormous flocks of parrots that would never have come this far east before. The flock of two hundred or so Sulphur Crested Cockatoos that used to deafen us a few years ago has just about doubled in size. There's another flock of Corellas hanging around too: it has around five or six hundred members and a fair proportion of those are Long-Billed Corellas which *used* to be a strictly inland species and one on the endangered list. Hah! Not any more! I stopped counting at a hundred last time the big flock visited our place. They're getting pretty cocky (no pun intended) too and have an unfortunate habit of munching on people's TV cables and other electrical lines. Zapp goes the Cocky!

There've been interesting smaller parrots about as well: Musk Lorikeets and Little Lorikeets and Fig Parrots and Turquoise Parrots. Oh, and a growing flock of White-tailed *Black* Cockatoos (normally only seen in more remote mountainous or wet-sclerophyll areas) has been swanning about our suburb. That really has been an eye-opener!

We've seen more and more snakes and lizards around locally this past twelve months than ever before. They were coming up from the local swamplands in search of food and, presumably, a bit of water as well. This explained the existence of a new family of kookaburras in our street: they like nothing more than a juicy snake for brekkie. I saw one youngster fly up onto a power pole, perch there for a second and then fly off with a small (15") snake in its bill! Now, what the snake was doing on the power pole utterly escapes me, but I guess this snake will not be leaving any pole-climbing offspring to add to the gene pool...

Anyway, sixteen bl**dy kookas waking you up at the crack o' dawn is no joke! Just one or two kookaburras is enough to wake the dead, but Mum and Dad and the sisters and the cousins and the aunts is beyond belief!!!

It'll be interesting to see what happens now there's a bit more water about. Will all the inland creatures go back home or will they stay on around the coasts where they've found easy pickings?

snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com,

Yes, parts of Australia have had plenty of rain, in fact too much. Most of it has been on the east coast with storms like they had yesterday in Cairns,

200mm (8 inches) in a few hours. Unfortunately, after doing lots of damage through flooding, most of this water ends up going out to sea.

The small amount that has fallen west of the Great Dividing Range has not reached the Murray River. Most of the flow from two storm events into the Darling has been pumped out into dams by cotton & rice growers. Crops that are normally grown in monsoon ares. The Murray River is dying due to the different States looking after their own interests instead of the interests of the Country. The sooner the federal Government takes over the Murray the better,

In South Australia we are at the end of the river which, apart from a couple of small dams near Adelaide, supplies water for the whole of South Australia, being pumped for hundreds of km. We have been on water restrictions for over 6 months, only able to water gardens for 3 hrs with a hand held trigger sprinkler once again. It has become pointless watering now, dust doesn't grow. The salinity of the water is now higher than the WHO recommended maximum for drinking water, but that is all we have. The forecast for the next few months is not good, just a continuation of days of 35deg C + (95 deg F). Those people who are having rain and snow in North America should be grateful.

Streve Boyes

Just been on the News, Port Douglas had 446mm (17.5 in) in the last 24hrs, all going out to sea.

Steve