Summer rain Outlook 16 Nov foretold near average for SE Aust. Summer rain Outlook 30 Nov better but already wrong if the ‘Lives at risk’ scare is half correct. OK so anybody can make mistakes – lets check what they forecast for November rain on Oct 12th and then on Oct 26th. Here is map of November rain percentages so the later Outlook on 26th Oct was worse than the one on the 12th. Taxpayers could save $millions slashing BoM budget – we could get forecasting from www. Let BoM do core job of running our weather observations network properly.
The negative reporting of rain is notable hey? A visitor from Mars seeing our TV news might assume rain is a poisonous fluid. Obviously it has harmed farmers who were still harvesting. But has anybody seen references to the value of summer feed that will be produced? Surely it will firm stock prices. The value of dam and river water? The extra value to Snowy and Tassie Hydro of the electricity they will have stored? Could all that value be a $Bn? Then there are municipal water supplies check Elders Dam levels pages.
The early October forecast from BoM was for a hot, dry summer in Eastern Australia.
Their source of confusion is clear. Global Warming theory now tells us that increased CO2 causes drought, flood, sunshine, cloud, snow and loss of snow, ice and loss of ice, extinction and famine, revolution, earthquakes, ocean acidification, coral loss, polar bear extinctions, icebergs, and sea rise. They cannot cope with all the new information.
In central Victoria where we were warned of 150-200mm rainfall with possible flooding of the Loddon River. Here, near Vaughan, so far (@ 1:30 PM Saturday) since rain commenced on Thursday night we've had a grand total of 22 mm. Not exactly the stuff of Noah and looking at the NOAA WX model it doesn't look as though there's much more to come.
After some pretty dire weather warnings for the state generally it looks a bit of a non-event, except in some parts of the north east.
I heard the BoM on TV news today claiming “unprecedented” rain and I note their map for today “Goulburn Broken Rainfall and River Conditions” shows a highest reading of 186mm at Mt Wombat 582035 between Mansfield and Euroa. But their contour map of rain totals shows a patch coloured to indicate rain 200 to 300mm which is a complete fake – simply a product of the BoM mapping software.
The all-time highest daily Vic rain totals were on 1st Dec 1934 east and south-east of Melbourne – up to 266.7mm – so far never mentioned by BoM or on TV News.
So far then they have made dodgy claims on TV news.
Digging deeper into the 1st Dec 1934 rain event which produced the standout highest daily rain totals for Vic ( which I have not heard mentioned by BoM or anybody else on TV news) I find their map of rain for 1st Dec 1934 hopelessly inaccurate. The highest recordings were south of Morwell at Hazel Park – that plus Binginwarri near Port Albert and Korumburra and several others are simply not shown. Weird. I will try and build my own map of peak rain readings for 1 Dec 1934.
Yes Wazz it's puzzling why there are no 200 mm + purple zones shown in the south where the 200 mm +, 1 Decmber, 1934 records occurred?
News uses this graphic which includes rainfall totals recorded over a 35 hour period, but even then they don't come close to the December, 1934 figures you include.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews described the rain as “unprecedented”.
“This has been a very serious event," he said.
"Some of the rainfall totals we’ve seen, it’s well and truly the entire summer’s rain almost in just a 24-hour period."
No doubt there's more alarmist hype to come…..
Here are the 1 Dec 1934 +200mm sites plotted over part of the error ridden BoM contour map for that day. Larger map.
The above 1st Dec 1934 data came from BoM Extremes page – with additional sites above 200mm from AWN archives District 85 & 86.
I noticed that the News report referred to in my comment above (yesterday at 12:35 PM) has been edited to remove both Daniel Andrews' storm hype and the scary rainfall graphic.
The 24 hour rainfall 9:00 AM readings from our location in central Victoria for the four days 1 Dec to 4 December were:
Vaughan BoM 6.0 mm, 16 mm, 3.2 mm and 1.0 mm
Our home gauge (~4.5 km west of Vaughan) 7.0 mm, 15.0 mm, 6.0 mm and 0.5 mm
Is this a rare “mea culpa”. Vic Emergency Commissioner rebukes the BoM. Amazing. But who knows what was said by the BoM behind the scenes. We only see their stage managed stunt news crosses on TV.
Victoria weather: ’10 out of 10′ storm label ‘overused’, Lapsley admits, as residents mop up record-breaking rain 4th Dec 2017
www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-04/10-out-of-10-victorian-storm-label-overused,-lapsley-admits/9222110
Thanks Beachgirl, enjoyed the article, especially:
“It’s easy in hindsight to look back at the decisions made. I’ll stand strong, if we get it wrong I’m the first to say we got it wrong,” Mr Lapsley told ABC Radio Melbourne. “The variance was the location, the timing and the intensity of the rain event.”
Hmmm – only the location, timing and intensity of the prediction were incorrect. So if I said it was going to rain cats and dogs tomorrow in Victoria, and it actually rained a bit less than that in last year’s Indian monsoon, would that be close enough do you think?
*
Mr Lapsley said it was important to get messages about severe weather events to the public right. “I think there are a couple of learnings out of this about the early narrative.”
Double Hmmm. Reminds me of a friend who, when she meant “say”, would instead come out with “verbalise the concept”…
Emergency Management Commissioner Craig Lapsely may have acknowledged his mea culpa concerning the over-the-top hyperbole relating to last weekends "great storm" in Victoria, but unfortunately he is not so up-front when it comes to his currently running bush fire warning ads.
We thought we may have seen the last of bush fire warning ads telling Victorians that "leaving early before a fire starts is always the safest option". Just how Victorians are meant to know when a fire is about to start is not explained? Were rural Victorians to act on this absurd advice, the inevitable chaos on rural roads would almost guarantee catastrophe.
David Brewer
December 5, 2017 at 9:10 am
Lapsley’s-
“I think there are a couple of learnings out of this about the early narrative.”
is disheartening.
If he can’t speak plain simple English to the people of Victoria he should be replaced.
It is not common for the BoM to sustain any media criticism. And even rarer for a serious Govt org to take a poke. I can think of Qld flood events and some Sydney-Hobart yacht race.
Decades ago in the daze of newspapers media people told me “if we publish anything contra to BoM they threaten to take away our weather feed”. How the climate has changed for the dear petals – think Jennifer Marohasy amazing success getting critical material in The Oz over a few years now.