Hot

Outside where I am sitting at the moment it is a pleasant 30 degrees, inside the house it is in the mid 30s after being shut up all day. Everything is open to try and get it down a bit, but it's still hot. There was a nice pleasant breeze before but that seems to have died down.

Earlier this evening I was at Westfield Doncaster, where I noticed a large number of people carting around fans, portable air conditioners and evaporative coolers.

I am not looking forward to another 43 degree day tomorrow.

Update Update

I promise I will start working on the promised Adelaide rail/transport post, but for now a short update.

Last night I went to a friends birthday in St Kilda, at a pizza restaurant bar type place situated in the old St Kilda station. The food was good and cheap ($5 pizzas), alcohol was okayish pricewise, the doof doof music was terrible. At a table near us were seated the winner of the moddeling show hosted by Jenifer Hawkins on channel 7 and all his friends. Boorish " metro" types in fluro T shirts and wierd haircuts. That guy is probably set for life though, can have any man/woman he chooses, and will rake in millions. Good luck to him.

The view out my front door

Right now it is raining in Melbourne, although most people probably noticed that. There is also the occasional hail shower. At one stage the hail was so thick on the ground it looked a bit like snow. I haven't seen hail like this for years. It's not in much of a hurry to melt away either, and is still sitting on the ground nearly an hour since the first shower (although as I said it has been topped up occasionally).

Looking up the street

Our rain gauge was emptied this morning just after it started to rain, and was reading about 15 mm after the first hail shower. Not sure how accurate it is or how much the hail floating in the top affects it, but I suspect it is actually a bit less than the reading. The near by Viewbank weather station does not seem to agree either.

Hail floating in the rain gauge

Rain

In the recent rain episode we recorded 35 mm in our backyard rain gauge from 6 am Saturday to 9 am this morning. This is more than the 28.8 mm recorded over the same period at the nearest BOM weather station at Viewbank (about 1.5-2 km away as the crow flies). In the radar image above, which shows rainfall over 24 hours to 9am this morning, you can see a small green patch to the north west of the Viewbank place mark. This seems to correlate to the rainfall reading of our gauge V.S. the Viewbank gauge.

Our rain gauge is a cheap one from K Mart, it consists of the plastic gauge and a stick it sits on the top of which is pushed into the ground. I don't know how accurate it is though, I'll have to measure the markings on the side to find out.

Rain

As I write it is raining again, it rained nearly all night. When I went to bed we were in the middle of a thunder storm, when I woke up some time after 7 am it was pissing down. I went back to sleep and got up at nearly 11 am, when i looked outside the ground was soaked. On checking the BOM site we had had nearly 28mm since about 7pm yesterday. The largest rainfalls occurred in the Otway Ranges, and as I write the radio news has said that police are warning of dangerous rock falls on the Great Ocean Road and that a man was killed by a branch falling on his tent at Lorne. My brother, his wife and kids are in their brand new caravan at Anglesea, they called to say they are OK. Apparently this is th largest singe rainfall weve had in 21 months, that is nearly two years, I beleive it too.

Edit: I did have a radar image at the top of this post, which I "uploaded" using the URL of the original image. I thought it would make a copy and save it to my blogger account, turns out it keeps using th live image at the url I typed in. So I took it down. The image at the time was pretty impressive, I assure you.

Orange Clouds

This was the colour of the sky on Sunday evening, I bet the sunset that was providing the light show was even better.

(Theres my 7 posts per month minimum maintained!)

Too late, weekend stuff and a red hot moon.

I really need to go to bed earlier. I need to go to bed now. This morning I slept in until 7, when idealy I should be going out the door at this time. At least it's starting to get lighter in the morning now. The spring weather we've been having the last few days has been great. I like temperatures in the high teens, low twenties are better, but you've got to build up to it, otherwise it actually feels hot, especially at this time of year. Some more rain would be nice.

I've got a few pent up postings in the pipeline too, mostly about what I did on the weekend. This included geocaching, football, steam trains and waterfalls. I might get around to it next weekend. Maybe I should take my laptop on the train and do it there.

As for last night all I can say is that blood red moons are creepy (when there is no cloud in the way that is). I remember the last total lunar eclipse like it was yesterday. I couldn't believe it was all the way back in 2000. Seeing the moon this colour reminded me of the song Red Hot Moon by Rancid, not the song itself, just the title. (I would embed but I cant be bothered)