Author: Thylacine

Our small property in southern Tasmania has copped one cold front after another over the past three weeks.

The valley greyed out with each squall, and it looked like it was going to snow on several occasions.

Nonetheless, very little rain fell locally and the Huon River, fed by rain that falls up on the Lake Pedder high country, rose only a little.

Tellingly, as soon as the rain passed, the ground dried out.

Our seepage-fed dams are at the lowest level I have seen. There seems to be no moisture in the soil.

One of our dams has never really dropped much in the eight years I have been here, but this year it is way down.

I have attached today’s fuel dryness maps from BOM. Outside of the West Coast, Tasmania is bone dry.

Having had fires last year, and watching events on the mainland, some of us in Tasmania would be happy to miss out on a summer this year.

Keep those squalls a-comin’!

It has been a cold and windy lead-up to Christmas in southern Tasmania, as mainland Australia burns (pictured above).

Some local folk believe the cold weather refutes global warming, but it is well demonstrated that climate change will see greater extremes of both hot and cold, especially in high latitudes.

The stratospheric warming event reported on this blog earlier may be behind Tassie’s cold summer weather, but look up the Southern Annular Mode on the BOM website for the official explanation for the wintery conditions.

For an overall report on what caused the severe Australia-wide weather in late 2019 go to this link here.

My local observation is that despite the mostly light rain we have had in the successive cold squalls over the past six weeks, the ground is not sodden and dries out very quickly in the almost constant blasting wind. (DEC 13, 2019 EDIT: Our seepage fed dams are at the lowest level I’ve seen.)

I suspect that when the weather turns summer will come on strong, but we’ll have to wait and see. Given what is happening on the mainland, a summer without a summer might not be such a bad thing for Tasmania in 2019/20.

Aside from a fire at Swansea, as I write this Tasmania has escaped major burns so far. Fires started in October but the onset of polar weather in November knocked them out.

So, what is IMO2020, as per the heading?

It is a new shipping fuel regulation that will bring sulfur pollution down by a large margin. Unfortunately sulfur helps with “global dimming”, which cools the planet slightly, although not enough to counter greenhouse warming from CO2 and methane.

Will global warming take a leap upward when global shipping stops emitting sulfur? The amount of sulfur pollution released from shipping far exceeds that from all the world’s cars and trucks … link here.

Something to ponder.

Happily, the polar blasts have brought decent rainfall to the West Coast, but the East Coast still looks grim, as shown on the one-month anomaly image below.

This morepork, or Tasmanian spotted owl, visited us around the first week of November.

Sadly, it had a damaged wing. It could fly, but with difficulty.

I heard an owl one evening a few days later, so perhaps it hung around.

Having seen this relatively small species of owl, perhaps one day we will see one of these.

Also sighted last week in the same spot as the owl was a spectacular white bird of prey, a grey goshawk, in the Tasmanian white subtype.

Unfortunately the goshawk had an entourage of birds pestering it and didn’t stay long enough for a photo.

A GME TX6160 handheld radio was recently handed to Andrew Melton of southern Tasmania’s Judbury Fire Station, courtesy “Scott Povey”, who provided the radio in lieu of payment for his magazine editorial contribution in North Australian Fishing and Outdoors Magazine.

Mr Povey had seen last summer’s Tasmanian bushfires in the news, and decided to make the donation.

The radio was provided at a discount by GME.

The magazine’s publishing company The Editor’s Office Pty Ltd will donate a similar radio for nearby Huonville Fire Station.

The time-honoured tradition of burning off has little if any effect on bushfire risk, researchers say … story here.

Their study found that fire risk is best managed by appropriate landscape design around towns.

The study is sure to prompt some heated debate, as burn-offs are still commonly used.

Wonderful cold, wet weather in Tasmania at the moment.

The mainland though is hot and dry, with fires burning everywhere.

Note the fires in Cairns, Cape York Peninsula and the Kimberley. More recently Victoria started burning.

I am posting this, with the image above from today’s Sentinel, as an archival record, as it is so early in the fire season.

Aside from a fire in the north-east, there are no major fires in Tasmania, yet the Snowy Range in Tasmania’s south was covered in a distinct haze today.

This area should have some of cleanest air in the world.

Could be worse though … check this out.

Meanwhile, South Australia has broken November records … the Bureau of Meteorology said multiple areas broke their maximum November temperature records, including:

Hindmarsh Island 40.7C
Nullarbor 46.6C
Murray Bridge Airport 44.0C
Kingscote Airport 39.1C
Stenhouse Bay 40.1C
Robe Airfield 38.0C
Parafield 44.3C
Keith 44.3C
Padthaway South 39.9C
Clare 40.8C
Strathalbyn 43.1C
Lameroo 44.0C
Naracoorte 40.2C
Parndana 38.1C
Nuriootpa 42.1C

Large areas were 16C above the November average.

Perhaps Tassie is heading in this direction, come January/February. As I write this, 35C in the shade in the Huon.

Fire damage on the mainland so far. And it’s not yet December …

#NSWRFS Building Impact Assessment teams are continuing their inspection of fire affected communities. In the past fortnight, 421 homes have been destroyed. Around 2000 homes have been spared. Already this fire season, six lives have been lost and 530 homes destroyed.#nswfires pic.twitter.com/c4Hlon64DZ

— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) November 17, 2019

Tasmanians who were threatened by last summer’s bushfires will be well familiar with the Sentinel website that shows fire activity.

Happily, Tasmania’s recent polar blast has made the state cold and wet and Sentinel shows no fires across the island.

To the north, on the Australian mainland, NSW and SEQ burns.

Less well publicised are the fires burning across Indonesia. Two Sentinel snapshots are shown from today, NSW above, Indonesia below.

A polar blast is spreading out over the mainland as I write this.

Whether it is related to the unusual stratospheric warming event I mentioned earlier this year I do not know, but we are having a very wet and cold November in southern Tasmania, after hitting 34C and humid just a few days ago.

The Snowy Range is well covered in white.

Meanwhile, north of the polar intrusion, unprecedented fires burn in NSW/SEQ (below) …

Click here to view a page with an animation.

See a series of pictures of the developing NSW fronts here.