S.A Weard Weather

love the "fox hunt" Willem..... lol...!

Hi Willem
Weird weather here to so, what's new almost normal.
I have always been told fox's are more more cunning than a weasel,
As the image would suggest you will know the make and calibre of the firearm.
Being left handed are the available in South Paw configuration.
Silly old me dreaming again, not worth the hassles for a Kiwi that only goes there for a few months of a year.

If you are old enough (60 +) you have seen it all before climate change is a young person/enviromentalist invention un heard of 50yrs ago when we had strange wheather patterns. Rising sea levells I dont thinkso its called wave erosion on coast line been happening for centuries, Just people in sist on living to close to the sea.

i agree with you but i aint that old, my last comment above was said with tounge in cheek. cheers

B-------t Andy, You where around to help Noah, put the Ark in Lake Eyre.
Come up and have a wee drop.
Regards
Greg

ah greggles i may look it but thats what happens when you push the body to beyond human limits as you know.

50 C in the shearing shed, gezz i miss those days.

You must be mistaken or one of the younguns Stephen , as all the old guys reckon weather comes in cycles and they have seen it all before - then there is Alziemers, so perhaps they forgot how to read all those the written recordings.

Hi Robin
It is not at matter of coming in cycles or forgetting how to read records. Records were broken, just like in Melbourne. We expect this type of weather in the new year and summer, not spring and mid November.

Cheers

Stephen

Hi Stephen
I grew up in Gawler and can remember the heat quiet well. Last week up here at Imbil Qld we got to 44 with humidity followed by a dry lightening storm. One bolt hit the train line about 1 km away gees in the van we nearly hit the roof with fright. It put the towns postoffice off line for 3 days. Not as if we all haven't experienced these weather changes before !!!
Sharon

I'm just being tricky Stephen , I note that as late as yesterday a IPCC review showed that climate change on balance is accelerating and so more all time records are about to be broken.

"Normal" is only a statistical average, so the chances of any one year being "normal" in that they exactly get the "normal" figures, is very small. The only thing that really matters is changes in averages, and they sure are looking very ugly for South Australia at the moment. A read of this morning's Australian on the topic is quite scarey.

You must be a young or notso young fart, fisho :-)

I have measured our temperate zone rainfall for the past 7 years @ 312mm average. Haven't kept a temperature average but no doubt it can be obtained via the BOM site

Most years are average (i.e. I do not notice much difference) and I keep a garden diary of sorts so I can recall what happens every year :-)

2009
January……..Second week summer starts
Blackbirds active in garden
100 Galahs a day in the yard
Red Grapes start to ripen and sparrows get interested
Late January start of 14 day heat wave with temps up to 48 C
Start picking Blackberries from late January

February…. Normally a hot month
First week Galahs start losing interest in Almonds
Sparrows getting serious about Red Grapes
Second week start preserving red grapes
Ringnecks take over from Galahs in Almond trees
Red Grape Preserves cooked mid month
Start preserving Nectarines as they ripen
Black grapes starting to ripen
Lady Finger grapes starting to ripen

March
11th March Lady Fingers and Black Grapes ripening but still not sweet
Nectarines and peaches are starting to fall off trees.
Time to start bottling. Vegies ripening. Galahs have left almond trees
Blackbirds, Honey Eaters, Happy Jacks, Sparrows, Aussie Ringnecks, Wattlebirds, Crested Pigeons in the garden
Almonds are finished, picked, dried and put away
Olive Trees are fruiting should be ripe by mid May.
Glorious days 25-30°C and no wind
2nd weekend in March. Fruit bottling. Also pick Black Grapes for cooking
Watch Pear tree as Ringnecks are picking at the fruit
We bottle Black Grape Topping...Yummm with icecream
Daylight Saving sun rises much later
Do some pruning

April
Daylight Saving ends 6th April and life adjusts again to normal mode though the first few days can be described as jet-lag. Easter comes and goes.
Mid month and the Lady Finger and Black Grapes now sweet but the birds are hard at it and picking must be done. Olives starting to colour black
No Dig Veg Garden needs to be Dug (looking for potatoes), and then fertilised with (sheep) manure and pea straw.(done)
The days are cooler now, especially after Easter.
Early winter rains last week of April 32mm
Dew starts forming beginning last week of April and early May

May
Still a few bunches of grapes left after birds have had their fill
Blackbirds and Wattlebirds peck at Olive tree and still at grapes
Time to prune the Blackberry vine and the Grape vine
Fire season over. Can burn some accumulated dry foliage etc
Pick early Olives for bottling
Olive bottling process 10 days brine then store in Olive Oil filled jars.
Leaves falling and autumn colours everywhere.
Mid-May. Pick bottom half of Kalamata Olive tree. 10 days brine with a change of water very day, Store in bottles
Prune fruit trees and grape vine.
Pump water to top up all tanks from overflow tank.

June : Cold weather. Time to prune

July : Just hang in there. Bloody Cold month down to -5/-8°. Sun rises late, frosty mornings, burst water pipes sometimes. Daphne in flower. Cyclamon in flower.

August: Beginning of month Soft Shell Almond trees start to blossom. Mid month Hard Shell Almond trees blossom. Depending on winds, the blossoms may not last long. 2009 all Almond blossoms blown off the trees by the third week. By end of month Nectarine trees in blossom. Daffodils and Jonquils in flower. Dendrobium Orchids flower. Euphorbia and Alstroemeria in flower, as well as Acacia trees and Lucerne Trees. Hiacynth have flowered and Grape Hyacinth is coming into flower. Dust storm and red dust everywhere.

September: Warmer weather but can still be quite cold depending on the southern ocean weather cycles. Period of high winds and some rain. Wisteria in flower. Jasmine starting to bud as is the Honeysuckle. Kalamata Olive tree blows down in extreme high winds. Resurrect it with aid of winch and prop it up. Next night very high winds again and it goes over the second time. All tanks full. 78.5mm for the month so far at 27th. Mr Lincoln Rose starting to flower. Another 1.5mm to make it 80mm.

October: More rain. 25.5mm by 5th. Mr Lincoln rose in full bloom. We spy two Stumpy Tail Lizards in the Garden. Blackbirds, Sparrows, Crested Pigeons, White Naped Honeyeaters, Yellow Naped Honeyeaters. Two chooks kark it but we buy 3 more. Continue working on lounge walls. Some nice days early in the month but mornings still cool. Warm days towards end of month. Notice Almonds in trees and Olive trees fruiting. Mulberry loses fruit yet again. Irises in bloom. 60mm rain all up.

November: Some warmer days. Cloudless skies. 3 days of 42°. Grape vine shooting. Galahs start arriving and help themselves to almonds. Sparrows building nests. Blackbird feeding young. Pump tanks to distribute water. Vegie garden growing. Rainfall now 53mm above average.

AS stated, it is pretty much the same every year...give and take a few days here and there :-)

Cheers

That is a really wonderful diary Willem. I wish I had kept something similar.
But the climate really is changing. I got the newspaper wrong in my post this morning. Have a look at today's Age.

Hi Mfewster,

I looked at The Age but could not find anything.

The climate has been changing since day ONE. Are we helping it along? Dunno..I prefer to be a sceptic :-)

You are right Willem. It was still there but no longer on the front page. Here it is
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/warming-diagnosis-beyond-worst-case-20091124-jhco.html

Everyone agrees that climate has always changed. What is different now is the rate of change. The only times in the past it has changed at this rate have been when we have had impact events (in geological terms, a hundred years is pretty well as instantaneous as a meteororite strike. When we had a climate change as a result of one of those, the reults were catastrophic for much of the world's life and whole new patterns of life then slowly re-evolved. While climate does change, slowly, naturally, the resons for the change can usually be found in things like altered sun activity etc. The only thing to explain the current changes, and the rate of change, are the man made green house emissions. Th rates of change we are getting are consistent with the modelling and predictions first made on this some 20 odd years ago. If anything, the pace of change is accelerating, probably because we have pumped out greenhouse gasses faster than the original modelling predicted.
This time, we have whole human patterns of agriculture and infrastructure that are going to be vulnerable. it isn't just that the heat will be uncomfortable, we are likely to have massive human dislocation that will lead to wars etc that will be probably motre dangerous than the actual climate changes.

Hahahaha...yes....thanks for the link

A quick scan of the words written beggars belief. The article is just as believable as the daily hysteria about what food we eat and that this or that is bad for you. We can go around in circles with this climate change argument and not come to any agreement. I remain a sceptic. Apart from that I won't be here by 2100 so the people living then will have to deal with any changes that may happen.

Cheers

Um. Look, happy to discuss this further, and I do mean discuss and will try very hard not to froth at the mouth etc.
I can see nothing in the report apart from a fairly sober summary of the emerging data.
For the life of me, I can see no validity in the sceptic position at all, apart from what I am sure we all feel, a fervent wish that it isn't so. But the definition of intelligence is the ability to see patterns, because that is how we make predictions and respond accordingly. The patterns are all too clear.
We can say it isn't our business and the future generation can just look after the mess we create, but I find that a bit reprehensible. The real nasty stuff incidentally is predicted to start around 2020 and I may be an old fart, but that is well within my planned span of years.
The best work I know examining the usual sceptic's arguments is "Poles Apart". The authors claim they started neutral and slowly worked their way through the all the arguments. You would have to read it to see if they deal with your particular reason for sceptisism.
The majority of the world's scientists are ringing alarm bells. Anyone who questions their conclusions seems to be grabbed onto like the drowning man and the straw because none of us like the conclusions. Given the extent of the consequences, at the very least, surely it makes sense to respond to the issue seriously?

I tend to want to avoid a debate on this as our ideas are most likely going to be at either ends of the debate spectrum. Maybe one day over a quiet beer will suffice. Take a run up north and try to change my views.....:-0)

In saying that our biggest problem is going to be feeding the ever increasing population of this planet. Like the dinosaurs we may be all destined for extinction. If I live to be 100 it should take me close to the middle of this century. It remains to be seen what will transpire in the next number of years.

I agree that this is the sort of thing really best done over a quiet glass of beer. I get up north a few times a year, although not in the immediate future, so may just take you up on that.
Can also only agree with you on the feeding problem. If climate change does what is forecast, huge areas of current food production areas will be lost. For mine, the current emissions control debate is laughable, it is much too late and the emissions controls too limited and it will take years before any (if any) positive results started to come through on climate. And meanwhile populations will still have gone up and more and more people will require energy and cars and water and food etc so even if the energy use per person decreases, the overall figures (and that is what counts in a closed system) will still have gone up. I am all for encouraging dramatic decreases in birth rates. This wont happen because we are still hooked on the idea that economies can only work if they keep expanding. This is the same thinking that can't see the fallacy in pyramid selling schemes.
Yep. just like the dinasaurs, except that we have the answers in our own hands if we have the nouse and ability to act as a species in our own interest
Cheers