One of the strange things about being a stranger here is trying to figure out what the weather forecasts mean.

For one thing, they usually say it’s going to be:

“Fine.”

Fine?

To me, that implies “hardly a cloud in the sky, bright and sunny, and warm. Head for the beach, yo!”. But it doesn’t seem to mean that here.

My Dad in Toronto a specialist in amateur weather data gathering. Yes, that means what you think, but he’s also a volunteer team coordinator in the provincial emergency management and disaster response organization, so I don’t mind him getting all excited about dark and stormy clouds. But Dad, could you maybe please just keep your eyes on the road instead of looking for the tornado anvils? Thanks dude! You’re a star. Now get me to the airport. I’ve got a plane to catch. Preferably before the tornado gets here.

So I’m always getting messages like “Good morning Andrew! According to crystal-ball-forecasting.com here, it’s a fine day for you today!” Well, thanks for checking, but he means “nice” and no, it’s not nice today, actually.

Since Dad is a weather nut, I’ve been paying closer than normal attention to the forecasts here. And there’s something strange going on: the weather forecasts don’t ever seem to have anything to do with the weather. I think the problem is that Crystal Ball Forecasting Inc get their data from the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology, who appropriately enough seem to use a crystal ball for their weather forecasting. Don’t believe me? I shall now demonstrate.

The quoted portions are from the Bureau of Meteorology’s morning forecast on the day given, usually leaving out the part about what the wind was expected to be. Copyright © 2008-2009 Commonwealth of Australia in right of Her Majesty the Queen. The comments are from my emails conveying the weather forecast to my Dad on those days.

23 Sep 2008

Forecast for Wednesday:

“Cloudy. Isolated showers or drizzle but fine for the most part.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? “Fine”? What are they smoking?

1 Nov 2008

How’s this for a weather forecast for Saturday night:

“Overcast with the chance of a shower, otherwise fine.”

So do I need a rain jacket or not?

10 Mar 2009

“Chance of a shower or two, more likely during the morning and then again at night. A cloudy morning, but sunny breaks developing during the day.”

Of course, it was bright and sunny all day.

3 May 2009

The forecast today:

Partly cloudy near the coast with a few showers, clearing later. Mostly fine with lengthy sunny periods in the west.

I would have taken that to mean it’s raining out west, except that would imply it was raining over the city’s water supply catchment area, which never happens. So they were probably right about it not raining there after all.

26 May 2009

The weather:

“Fine and mostly sunny until a shower or two develops”

really.

2 Jun 2009

As at 07:30, the forecast for the day is:

“Cloudy with a few showers, and periods of light rain developing.”

I’m glad you clarified that.

19 Jun 2009

“A few showers. Cloudy periods. Morning fog patches.”

Since it is nice and sunny out, I think I’ll go out for a coffee in the park now.

15 Jul 2009

“Cloud increasing and a shower or two developing in the afternoon with the chance of a thunderstorm and small hail.”

Which is clearly why it is sunny out right now at the cafe where I’m sitting.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt, though: it does “change” here sometimes, so I most certainly brought my raincoat with me this afternoon when I went a wandering. Nothing to do with the Bureau of Meteorology; that’s simply a Murphy’s Law thing.

That evening

“A shower or two, with a chance of tsunami. Light to moderate south to southwest wind.”

Which admittedly is nothing to joke about, but given their track record…

4 Jul 2009

For once the official forecast was quite dull. So I improvised:

“Lengthy sunny periods, except for heavy morning showers, afternoon fog patches, chance of an evening thunderstorm. Possible snow overnight.”

Dad missed my note saying that I was joking; he simply commented “seems par for the course”.

Fine

There is a happy ending to this story, though: I finally found out what “fine” meant!

Apparently they’re trying to say:

“It won’t rain today”.

Pardon me for being underwhelmed.

AfC

Comments:

James Andrewartha wrote in suggesting a page of terms used by BOM, including “fine”. Thanks! Doesn’t excuse the fact they’re still using the word differently than the rest of the English speaking world, though :)

Spend a few weeks hiking in Tasmania over New Year’s…

Hazzard beach, looking south to Mt Freycinet and Mt Graham in Freycinet National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

No water here, or (anywhere else in the park for that matter). It’s only 600m up, but it’s a fairly steep climb. Lucky to have had gorgeous weather, but whoa was it hot. Packed in 10L of water. Heavy. Still ran low; should have brought even more. I used to think those pocket desalinaters were gimmicks, but I’m having second thoughts now.

The view east from Mt Graham, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

I like cooking pancakes when I’m trekking and make sure to bring maple syrup along, of course. Apparently, the wallabies at Wineglass Bay also like pancakes. The pot lid kept this one out of the batter, but didn’t prevent it from feeling free to lick the spoon.

Breakfast at Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

There are some astoundingly beautiful National Parks in Tasmania, although you have to drive for ever to get to any of them — forget about public transit; you’re renting a car so you can park it for a week when you get there. Great.

Worth it for the views, though. You get to missing mountains, sometimes.

Looking southwest from Mt Rufus in Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

You can also forget about seeing any old growth forest; while the National Parks in the state cover an impressive amount of ground, the formation of these reserves appears to have come long after the bulk of the big timber was removed, and logging continues to happen in protected areas. From high up on the mountains you can plainly see the clear-cut areas, which is a shame, because properly managed forests can be a renewable resource. The trouble, however, it takes on the order of 70 years before a plot is ready for harvesting. Most people aren’t really that patient, and clear cutting is often “easier”.

What really gets me, though are the “state forests” which are marked as “multi-use”. Funny how there aren’t many trees left. Same thing happens all over – Canada’s “National Parks” are “multi-use”; take a drive through the Rockies from Calgary to Vancouver and you’ll keep coming to National Parks that are “temporarily closed for logging, no camping” and clear-cut. Then there is the activity of the American federal “Forestry Service” (which is in the business of building roads so that it easier for logging companies to mow down said forests). Australia, it seems, is no different.

And this from a guy who is otherwise pro-logging. Lumber is an essential construction material, and paper will remain the essence of recording and disseminating information for a long time to come. An immense number of jobs come from their production. But if we want to have those jobs in the future, and if we want the forests to continue to be viable and not have all the soil wash away in the next hurricane, the forest industry must be incented to contribute to the sustainment of the land. It’s pretty simple: no soil, no new growth of any kind, period. The only thing I can think of is something like a reverse carbon tax: for every large tree of a certain diameter, etc they can prove they didn’t cut down, they’d get a tax credit. Somehow, though, I’m guessing that all that would result in is plenty more bureaucracy but not a whole lot more in the way of sensible land management.

Anyway, I digress. The things you think about when you’re walking.

Approaching Russell Falls in Mt Field National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

Beautiful.

AfC

It was hot here the other day. And then it wasn’t.

At three in the afternoon on what was otherwise a lovely day in Sydney, it went from 34°C to 17°C in less than half an hour. Yikes.

Most places I’ve lived, this is a front coming through. But here, in the weather forecasts, they say “and then a change expected”. Change. Uh huh.

I suspect this is the result of Sydney being close to the south latitude region where the equatorial low pressure areas mix with the sub-tropical high pressure ones. Depending on which way the winds are slopping around, we’re either in a nice toasty warm tropical air mass or some nasty mess blowing in from the southern Indian Ocean. Same thing happens in Canada, only there it’s the marked difference between the temperate air masses and the arctic polar one.

AfC

Wayne Piekarski writes:

Guess what? I made the move over to America!

It’s rather notorious out in the rest of the world that New Zealanders get very upset when they get mistaken for Australians, and likewise Canadians go ballistic if they get asked “where in the States are you from?”

Having been abroad and an expatriate for almost a decade, I’ve realized that there are some clues that you might not have noticed:

A Canadian would never call it “America” — the country south of the border is “the States” or “the US”. After all, America is not one but two continents and at best describes the spherical lune between roughly 40° West and 150° West. Canadians in particular are big on the fact they live in “North America”. Dead give away if anyone says that. Surprisingly, though, referring to the citizens of that conglomerate below the 49th parallel as the “Americans” is fairly common. Go figure.

So Wayne is clearly not a Canadian. Might be a Kiwi, though. Never can tell :)

AfC

Yes I had to look “spherical lune” up; thanks to arc, pachi, iain, Amaranth and doctau for helping me find it, and for the fascinating subsequent discussion about Terry’s Chocolate Oranges

Australia in general and Sydney in particular have been in the grips of a long term “drought”. One way this is measured here on the coast is by considering the water levels available in the dams that provide Sydney’s water supply. When I first became conscious that water levels were a concern the percentage capacity available was in the mid 40s; this past Christmas it was down as low as 33%.

While this still represents 4-5 odd years of drinking water, it nevertheless is the kind of long term trend that is pretty worrying for urban planners, leading to talk of desalinization plants and immediate opposition owing to the energy cost of such efforts. (Strangely, forcing the local utilities to reduce the massive leakage from their pipes never seems to come up in public debates)

This year has been a bit different, though. To the great chagrin of those doing agriculture inland (whose farms, somewhat unfortunately, are in the middle of large deserts and really are devastated by the continuing drought), it has been bloody pouring here on the coast. While I understand the federal political necessity to keep saying “we’re in a drought”, it raises a certain amount of cogitative dissonance every time one looks out the widow. Our summer this year was terrible, supposedly due to a) el nino [you can blame el nino for anything -- it's great! who can prove you wrong?] which caused to b) it raining almost every day since December.

This has, however, finally been good for the dams. Water levels went from 33% to 38%, and people were pretty excited.

And then June happened

I was out of Australia for much of June. Thank God: in just one month look at what happened to the dam levels:

Now that’s net inflow!

Put in perspective, over the last 5 years the plot looks like this:

This information from the amusingly named iliveinsydney.com website, a source of not just great information about what goes on with Sydney’s water supply, but practical advice about rainwater tanks and irrigation that anyone with gardens, lawns, or urban forests in their care would be interested in.

AfC

Trying to get to the office this morning, my partner wrote from the ferry:

Traffic Jam in the harbour — three whales are blocking the way.

Living in Sydney is fun.

AfC