“Cold Outbreak” on course for SE Australia, as New Zealand towns register their first Snowfall in a Decade
Another “cold outbreak is looming” across Australia’s south east, local forecasters have warned.
“It’s all happening across the next few days across the nation with a cold outbreak looming for the south east,” said Sky News Weather meteorologist Alison Osborne.
“A cold air mass is on its way, a burst of polar air, that will sweep over Victoria and the through southern New South Wales,” added Osborne.
A low-pressure trough in western Queensland is pushing moisture not just over inland areas but to the coast, linking up with showers in the state’s southeast to bring lots of wet weather.
“We’re going to see substantial falls, many areas of southeastern Queensland are looking at comfortably more than a month’s worth of rainfall from this event,” Sky Weather’s Rob Sharpe said.
“Some of the drought-affected areas could even see double that July average just in this one event.”
It’s getting colder in Melbourne this week as that cold polar air barrels through.
Daytime highs will struggle to 10-12C (50-53.6F) by the time the weekend rolls around–readings below the seasonal norm; while overnight lows will tumble to just 4-5C (39.2-41F)–significantly below the average
Showers and shivers will be also a feature in Adelaide, with highs plunging to 12C (53.6F) on Friday, and lows of 5C (41) by Saturday.
A Canadian expat, who recently moved Down Under from one ‘the coldest cities in the world’, has complained of Australia’s “freezing weather”.
Isabelle Mae has been living on the South Coast of New South Wales since the beginning of 2020 after relocating from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
“I moved from the third coldest city in the world in the middle of Canada to Australia,” she said: “Why is it so cold? We’re so cold. Okay, it’s 10C (50F) but the houses are not well insulated here.”
Most Australian houses aren’t built for the cold.
One Aussie explained to the Daily Mail: “Australian houses have surprisingly terrible insulation. And most houses don’t have double glazed windows.”
These concerns come after millions of Australians weathered a record-breaking cold start to winter this year.
Australia’s east coast shivered through the longest May cold streak in half a century, with temperatures plunging to single digits in major cities.
The chill, caused by icy polar air riding up from Antarctica on the back of a weak and wavy meridional jet stream flow, lead to many areas suffering well-below freezing cold — lows of -7.5C (18.5F) were logged at Glen Innes in Northern NSW, while Perisher, located in the state’s Alpine region, touched –9.5C (14.9F).
New Zealand battered by Antarctic Air — Taranaki towns see their first Snowfall in a Decade
Flights have been cancelled, highways shut and essential services disrupted as an Antarctic polar blast engulfs New Zealand, bringing heavy snow, powerful waves and icy temperatures.
Auckland reported its coldest temperature of the year so far, and edged closer to surpassing the below freezing mark — a feat which has only been recorded eight times in the past 55 years, reports stuff.co.nz.
The city awoke to frosty conditions and a low of 0.2C (32.F) on Wednesday morning, as the big chill experienced around the whole of the country continued to take hold.
A low of 1C (33.8F) was logged at Auckland Airport–far below the average minimum temperature of 8.7C (47.6F) for the time of the year, and the lowest reading for 3 years (the last time the Auckland Airport weather station dropped below 1.3C (34.3F) was June 30, 2018).
The cold weather also impacted other North Island locales — a minimum of -2.1C (35.8F) was felt in Hamilton, -1.6C (29.1F) in Rotorua and -0.6C (30.9F) in New Plymouth.
Whangārei also experience its coldest morning of the year, waking up to a chilly 2C (35.6F).
The North Island capital city of Wellington was lashed by the worst tidal storms in years, with authorities asking some coastal residents to be ready to evacuate, as large swells were forecast over the next 24 hours.
Violent hailstorms have also battered parts of Wellington, and a state of emergency has been declared for southern and eastern areas of the city, with dozens of flights and ferry services cancelled, and schools shut.
The cold polar winds have delivered a blanket of snow to South Island cities such as Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown, reports reuters.com.
The past few days has seen a fierce shot of Antarctic cold barrel across ALL of New Zealand, leading the MetService to issue a range of severe weather warnings and watches.
The South Island has seen some unusually heavy snowfall — the Taranaki towns of Stratford and Midhirst, for example, have witnessed snowfall for the first time in 10 years.
After waking up to snow on Tuesday, a Taranaki school principal made the call to have her first-ever snow day. Wendy Single was driving to work when she realized the roads were too treacherous for families to get there:
Stratford mayor Neil Volzke said the town looked “beautiful” covered in snow, adding that the morning’s snow was the thickest he could remember, and it was settling on the roofs of homes, and on the trees.
“It doesn’t snow in the town often,” he said, “and when it does it’s usually sleety stuff, but this is thick, big flakes.”
The last time it snowed in the region was in August, 2011.
“It was quite surreal,” said local resident Miranda Egarr.
The frigid conditions are set to continue, with MetService forecasting chilly days across the region for the week.
Sunspot AR2835 and Ellerman Bombs
Bombs are going off around sunspot AR2835 — Ellerman Bombs.
Philippe Tosi photographed dozens of them on June 29 from his backyard observatory in Nîmes, France.
A handful of the bomb-flashes are circled below:
Ellerman bombs are magnetic explosions about one-millionth as powerful as true solar flares, explains Dr Tony Philips over at spaceweather.com.
They are named after physicist Ferdinand Ellerman who studied the tiny blasts in the early 20th century.
Of course, “tiny” is relative; a single Ellerman bomb releases about 1026 ergs of energy, equal to about 100,000 World War II atomic bombs.
So, why are these explosions happening?
This magnetic map of AR2835 provides the answer:
Note the ragged mixture of yellow and green around the periphery of the sunspot’s primary core.
These are magnetic fields of opposite polarity bumping together — such a mixture is explosive.
If this mixing continues, we could soon see a real solar flare. Sunspot AR2835 has a ‘delta-class’ magnetic field, meaning it harbors energy for strong M-class solar flares.
Stay tuned for updates.
The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).
Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.
Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.
Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.
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Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift
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