The count for today is now up to 7 egg beaters with 2 fuel trucks back on duty as well as that 1 amphibious scooper.

1 Transit van eventually turned up and immediately threw out a bucket and cable kit before joining the other ground crew member so it maybe that those fire bombers might be doing water bombing duties later on.

[edit] The count of egg beaters here is now up to 9 with 2 new arrivals and 1 is a considerate pilot as he comes in with a full bucket just to sprinkle down the area where he lands so he doesn't raise clouds of dust.

Anyhow stay cool, hydrated and safe.

Cheers.

Well 10 different egg beaters have turned up today and 1 big Bell had me confused there for a bit as it was only carrying a small orange bucket instead of the larger yellow jobs until the thing turned its ass towards me so I can now add an old Bell 214 to the list of choppers that have been out here.

Anyhow they must be expecting these 2 tankers to run out of fuel soon as a semi of the stuff just turned up (or they're getting ready for a late push before the sun goes down in a couple of hours).

[edit 1] I've just worked out that the 2 RFS choppers that have been here over the last few days are ex-military Bell 412 jobs though it looks like they couldn't patch the nose cone on the 1 that just took off as it has a brand new black job (you can see the patch covers on the other with its old patched white nose). the semi tanker has also taken care of its 1st 2 customers as the small 2 axle job (that didn't turn up yesterday) leaves and another 4 axle job joins the group.

But at least today only 3 have been seen down at once refueling and that only twice unlike yesterday with 5 down at once waiting.

Stay cool, hydrated and safe.

Cheers.

We had 8 choppers here as well as that lone amphibious scooper yesterday while ground crews were cut down from 30 to 6, but there was very little smoke coming from those 2 hills by yesterday evening.

Sadly we're back up to 60 bush/grass fires around the state after Thor's performances over the last couple of days.

Anyhow we'll see what happens today.

Stay cool, hydrated and safe.

Cheers.

FNQ (Far Noth Queensland) is certainly getting the snot knocked out of it at the moment.
While the cyclone itself didn't do a whole lot of damage, the continuing flow of moisture laden air following it's track is having a huge impact. A months' worth of ran in a couple of days, over a very wide area, is causing all sorts of flooding issues.

Major flooding in Far North Queensland

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Grant
Darwin NT

I'm sure that they could send a little bit of that down here without missing it.

Anyhow it's been a peaceful day here with the sound of choppers about in this 31C heat (26C inside)

.Cheers.

Cairns airport is closed again.

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Grant
Darwin NT

And a bit of an issue with the Palmerston Highway.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Well I found out why the sudden disappearance of all the choppers and that is that several lightening strikes in the Pilliga Forest (around 200km SW of here) and she went up big time.

Bushfire in Pilliga State Forest near Narrabri in north-west NSW closes Newell Highway

With a hot northerly breeze and temps already in the 36-39C range it's not looking good out there again.

And things are only getting worse up north with torrentual rain still falling.

Far North Queensland braces for more record rainfall, dangerous flooding with hundreds rescued in Cairns overnight.

[edit] Hopefully the next 7+ days of rain (if it arrives) will put out the last of the lite smoke coming off those 2 hills just northwards of here.

Stay safe.

They've just updated the story & the headline for that first link- now it' "Bushfire in Pilliga State Forest near Narrabri in north-west NSW upgraded to emergency level."
Record fires & record floods all at the same time.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Thor's stamping about here yesterday kicked off a few more bush/grass fires around here (1 halfway between our main 2 just to the north) with 63 state wide and with the swing in the breeze we should soon be smelling smoke once again from all 3. :-(

Hopefully the forecast over the next 7 days will help a lot if we get anywhere near the amount of rain that they're talking about.

Stay safe.

Cheers.

The last few days of rain have certainly helped with our state's bush/grass fires with just 15 now listed with a few more days worth still to come.

Stay safe and drive carefully over the holiday break.

Cheers.

It was a bit of a shame that I had to drain 200L of rainwater out of 1 of my IBC's here this morning to stop it from overflowing and with nowhere to use that water I just had to send it down the gutter and into the river.

Sadly recent lightening strikes over the last few days out in the central west of the state have made it the state's new hot spot. :-(

Anyhow I was checking out our recent stats for this area and found a huge anomaly in them after checking my records for this month so far. Our local recording point went down for a while, but instead of grabbing data from the next station north or south of it along the top of the range the silly buggers grabbed it from the next point west down the slopes where it gets much hotter than here ever does which had our av. low up by 2C instead of 1C and the av.max up by a whopping 6C instead of 2C. :-O

More showers and storms are expected again today (which may overflow my 2nd IBC) before we get a 2 day break away from them and hopefully we won't get too much today (even though we're still 20mm short of our av. here) and the yard will dry out enough tomorrow so that I can mow the day after. We then get another stinker before the wet returns.

Cheers.

Some more results of yesterday's storms here down under.

‘Catastrophic’: Extensive damage after storm ravages SE QLD, NSW.

Woman killed by fallen tree as wild Christmas storm lashes south-east Queensland.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been updated as yet, but Coffs Harbour really took a bullet for us up here yesterday.

Flooding in Coffs Harbour on New Year's Eve with severe weather warnings still in place for northern NSW.

They copped the full brunt of what was trying to come this way and received 205mm for their effort.

Stay safe.

For the month of December our av. min temp was up by 1.6C @ 13.7C and our av. max was up by 2.1C @ 26.8C though our officially corrupted av. temps were 14.8C and 30.7C by using Inverell temps while Glen Innes was down.

Our monthly rainfall of 91.5mm missed our long term av. of 108mm while our 544mm total for the year was well down on our long term yearly av. of 848.7mm.

Anyhow we'll just have to see what 2024 has in store for us.

Cheers.

Well ex-Tropical Cyclone Kirrily has been causing some havoc in the outback and we should feels its lingering effects here tonight.

Qld's Channel Country welcomes slow moving flood from ex Tropical Cyclone Kirrily.

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Kirrily fuels severe storms, flash flooding on NSW-Queensland border.

Warragamba Dam set to spill as ex-Tropical Cyclone Kirrily brings heaviest rain in decades.

Stay safe and dry.

Well I havn't seen much evidence of this El Nino since last October and they seem to think that La Nina will soon return.

Torrential rain cuts roads in north Queensland, with warnings of more to come into Sunday.

A Return to La Nina in 2024 a strong possibility, latest modelling shows.

At least I kept my IBC's from overflowing yesterday, now to see how I go today.

Cheers.

Well we we're down by 21mm here on our long term Feb average, but we're still 50mm ahead of the YTD average and more of that wet stuff is expected to fall over the next 7 days at least.

So much for El Nino, though our average mins and maxes are up, but the local weather station went down again and the idiots have given us temps from halfway down the western slopes during that time again corrupting their data, so once today's max is in I'll have to go back through my logs again to workout those actual values for here.

Anyhow after yesterday's 7.75mm I will not be going out to tame my part of the laneway as it's just far too boggy to bother trying.

[edit] I just did the numbers on our min low for the month and it was 1.5C up on the average at 14.8C.

Cheers.

Well our monthly average temp for Feb was 2.4C up on long term average at 27.3C as March here gets off to a hot start for a couple of days before returning to more normal early autumn temps.

Anyhow I think that I'm at the stage where I'm about to close up upstairs to keep the heat out as 31C is expected today.

Stay cool. ;-)

Cheers.

It's been a while since we had a real decent Wet season up here, but it's finally happened.
The major highways have been open and closed due to flooding several times over the last few months, and just over the last couple of weeks they've been closed more than open. Along with the railway line being closed several times.

And now with a low that became a cyclone in the gulf, some places have copped plenty of rain. Groote Eylandt got almost 250mm in the 24hrs to 9:00am yesterday, and it's already got another 416mm with another 3hrs to go this morning.
And once the cyclone crosses the coast and starts tracking back to the West, at least 2 of the 3 main highways will be flooded out yet again.



And down in the desert of the Nullarbor Plain, some places copped close to their annual average in only a day or so, resulting in unprecedented flooding. A station built in the 1960's has been abandoned until the waters subside, and they can come back to rebuild. It's a total loss.

Nullarbor flooding.


The shed in the background- the water eventually made it almost up to the guttering.

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Grant
Darwin NT