weather – Page 19 – dangermouse.net

Are we in for more rain? Yes, we are

Yesterday was not only Scully’s birthday, but my sister-in-law’s, so today we went out for a Sunday brunch with my wife’s family to celebrate.

We had a bit of trepidation, because it was at a cafe by the beach, and looking at Google Streetview it looked like the outdoor tables were protected only by flimsy sun umbrellas, whereas the weather forecast was for storms. We assumed we must have had the outdoor area booked, because we’d be bringing Scully. Checking the weather radar before leaving, it looked like we might be lucky, with a storm line moving through but clear air behind it. Indeed, it poured on us while we drove over there, but stopped by the time we got there. But we needn’t have worried, because they gave us a table well under cover – they allowed dogs into a large area under the cover of a patio awning.

Looking at the menu, I decided on eggs benedict (my usual go-to when eating out for breakfast). But then I saw a woman at an adjacent table being served a delicious looking plate of something, with a visible poached egg and a pile of chopped tomato. I checked the menu and concluded it must be the “halloumi bruschetta”, so I ordered that instead. And then when my dish arrived it was nothing like what that woman had received! I’d obviously made a mistake in assuming what it was, and so I ended up with neither my first choice meal nor the dish that looked amazingly good. Fortunately what I had was also perfectly fine, so no real complaints, just an amusing story.

After the brunch the rain held off, so I went for a walk with my wife and Scully along the beach to the centre of the suburb. There was a Sunday market on to look at, and I tried some gelato from a new place that looks like a high class Italian gelateria. They had some very interesting flavours to choose from. I tried the Black Forest (I can never go past Black Forest), and the pavlova with berries. After carefully shaping each scoop into the paper cup, another staff member wiped the freezer display case clean of any stray drips or blobs of gelato, to keep the entire thing looking immaculate and pristine. I’ve never seen that at a gelateria before! It was very good. I’ll have to go back again and try more of the flavours.

Back home, I managed to get my run in before the rain settled in for the remainder of the afternoon and evening. We’re supposed to get another 100 mm or more of rain over the next week. And it’s worse news for the flood-hit regions further north, which are expected to get much more rain than that. The TV news tonight said the worst-hit regions were now expecting another 80–160 mm in the next 6 hours, to be followed by more in the next days. The Bureau of Meteorology says that another east coast low pressure system seems to be developing – the same type of system that caused the ridiculous amounts of rainfall and flooding a few weeks ago. And this is with the land already now saturated. I guess we’ll see how it develops.

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Rain and the city

Yep, the rain is back. We had a few moderate showers throughout the day, but nothing really heavy. Tomorrow is supposed to be heavier, and then more heavy rain on Sunday.

The city looks nicer in the rain though, with the lights streaking across the wet roads and footpaths. I went in to the university a little later today as I had to look after Scully all day and then drop her at my wife’s work late, before heading in on the train. Rather than have a nice dinner somewhere near the university I grabbed some Vietnamese rice paper rolls from a take-away near the station.

The lecture tonight was the class I put together for data presentation, so mostly my material and exercises. I think it went pretty well! It was raining lightly on the way home, but I got a train quickly, so that wasn’t too bad.

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We survived the night

The rain stopped in the early hours of the morning, and we only had a light sprinkle today. And the sun came out in the afternoon.

It actually felt really weird, seeing sunlight.

I had my third face-to-face ethics class of the year this morning. There were more kids there, but still about 6 away sick. Slowly adding more kids to the class is helping with my memorisation of their names – I actually managed to run the class today without needing to give them name tags, and I had them all sorted out. And this class is very well behaved compared to some of the classes I’ve had in recent years, so we had a really good discussion on the topic of Fairness in Society, with plenty of good contributions from the kids.

Back at home I worked on some project examples for the data engineering course, and I’m getting very close to finishing the slides for Week 5 (in two weeks).

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Flooding has hit Sydney

The only thing to talk about in Sydney today was the weather. Specifically the rain, the enormous amounts of rain. Today was the 15th day in a row of rain here, and the heaviest. The Bureau of Meteorology forecast 150 mm of rain, and it looks like we may even exceed that. Added on to the previous two weeks of rain, with saturated soils and dams already full to overflowing, and it was a recipe for disaster.

First off, I’m fine, and my home is fine. I don’t live in a low-lying area, and I didn’t venture out onto the roads today.

But many people across Sydney are not so lucky. All of Sydney’s rivers, the Nepean, Hawkesbury, Parramatta, Georges, and Cooks Rivers are all flooded and spilling out into surrounding low-lying areas. Evacuation orders have been issued for dozens of suburbs, with the warning that people may be stranded in regions without power or water and it may be too dangerous to rescue them. On top of this there is widespread flash flooding all over the city, with roads being inundated and water flowing into properties. Hundreds of people have been stranded in waterlogged cars, and unfortunately two people have been recovered after losing their lives in floodwater. This is on top of the 20 people killed so far in the ongoing flooding across the rest of New South Wales and Queensland. There have also been a few landslides in places in and around Sydney.

The rain is expected to ease tomorrow, and we might even get some sunshine on Thursday, before more rain comes in after that. But tonight we have a gale warning current, for winds up to 110 km/h. Given all the trees across the city completely saturated with water, that’s going to cause a lot of them to blow over. Hopefully I’ll be here tomorrow…

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Making more bad graphs

It rained heavily again overnight, and more during the day. The weather seems to be the only thing everyone is talking about around here – the rain has just been so relentless. And more to come, we have another 80 mm forecast for Tuesday, and the Bureau of Meteorology says don’t expect the rainy weather to end any time soon.

Besides my daily run, and teaching ethics classes, I worked today some more on the lecture for the data presentation part of the data engineering course. I followed up my bad graph of a couple of days ago with some more today, and interactive material which will be run during the lecture to quiz students on aspects of visual presentation. I’m nearly done with this task now – maybe another coupe of slides tomorrow and I can move on to other jobs.

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Engineering data 2

It seems this intense rain weather system is very unpredictable. We were bracing for very heavy rain today, potentially the worst so far, but it turned out nowhere near as bad as yesterday.

Still, what rain there was, and flash flooding, interrupted train services. I had to travel into the university this evening for lecture 2 of the Data Engineering course. I could leave a bit earlier since there wasn’t the ISO meeting this week, and I did so, planning a leisurely dinner at a nice Asian place in the “Spice Alley” food laneway near the uni. But I ended up waiting 40 minutes at the station for a train – about 6 or 7 trains in a row were cancelled. And of course by the time a train finally showed up, it was full of people – meaning I had to cram on in what seemed like a ridiculously dangerous proximity given COVID.

I got to the university too late for a sit down meal, and wasted time tried to find a sushi place where I could just grab a take-away bento box, but in vain. In the end I ended up in the university food court, where half the places were closed for the evening already, and I chowed down a chicken schnitzel on a tortilla quickly before heading to the lecture room.

The lecture went well, and I had to wander around the room during the tutorial exercises and answer questions form students. It was pretty easy today but will get more complex as the course progresses.

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A bit less storm than expected, so far

After yesterday’s apocalyptic rainfall predictions, today turned out less wet than expected. Although that seems to be because the low pressure system causing all this rainfall is moving south a bit slower than expected so it’s just taking a bit longer to get here. The morning wasn’t too bad – a few heavy showers, light rain, and even a break or two. The really heavy rain has waited until late this evening, and is now expected to extend well into tomorrow. Some parts of Sydney have had around 150 mm today, and we’re expecting another 150 mm tomorrow, followed by smaller amounts (around 30 mm) every day for the next week.

This morning I had my second face-to-face ethics class of the year at the school. Some of the students away with COVID last week were back, but there were still half a dozen or so kids absent. But I had another 4 kids who said they thought they should be in ethics, but weren’t on the class roll, so I added their names. That brings the class up to about 20 kids, which is near the maximum size of 22. We started the first topic, which is about “a fair society”. And the kids were really good! They got into the discussion, and were giving good, thoughtful answers, and they were all behaving well, raising hands to talk and not interrupting or talking while others were speaking. It’s early days yet, but I think this may be the best behaved class I’ve had in my 6 years of teaching these classes.

Back home, I worked on some comics – I needed to make a Darths & Droids strip, and a few Irregular Webcomic! strips for this week. I didn’t do a full batch of the latter – that will wait until next week.

And this evening I had three online ethics lessons in a row, on the new topic of humour. I posed the question if it’s okay for people in difficult or tragic circumstances to joke about their situation as a coping mechanism. One kid said he’s seeing a lot of that now, since he’s in Romania, near the Ukraine border, and there are a lot of refugees passing through his town. And they’re all making jokes about their situation. I knew this kid was in Romania, but I didn’t know what city he was in, and had no idea he was near the Ukraine border. Last year for a few classes I had a kid who was actually in Ukraine. It was several months ago and I haven’t heard anything from them since, but I hope they’re okay.

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The calm before the storm

Quite literally. Yesterday, the forecast for Sydney for today and Wednesday was 15 and 30 mm of rain, respectively. When I got up this morning I checked the forecast again and it had been increased to 70 mm for today and 90 mm for tomorrow.

Around midday today they increased tomorrow’s forecast to 200 mm of rain.

This weather system has been causing havoc up the coast, from southern Queensland around the Brisbane area, then moving into northern New South Wales, and tomorrow it’s going to hit Sydney full force. We’ve seen historic record level flooding in several towns, and 8 people are now confirmed dead, with 2 missing, and fears that more bodies will be found once floodwaters recede. In NSW alone, around 40,000 people are now subject to mandatory evacuation orders and another 300,000 are under evacuation warning. Flood warnings have been issued for more towns, including Sydney.

But for now, it’s calm, and not even raining. It was raining very heavily this morning when I took Scully out for her morning toilet. By the time I got back in, I had to change all my clothes because they were wet, despite having a large umbrella. And dry Scully off, despite her wearing a doggy raincoat.

Today I set myself four tasks: Revise the homework for my ethics extension student and send it to him; complete notes for the science student from last night’s class and send those to her; write up rules and design cards for the “Family Argument” board game that I’m working on with my creative design student and send that to him; and write Thursday’s Darths & Droids comic. I managed to get almost all of them done – the first three, and most of a strip written I just need a punchline and that can be done. I guess tomorrow.

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Rain and floods update

The big news in Australia, which was even ahead of the war in Ukraine on the TV news bulletin tonight, is the absolutely massive amount of rainfall and subsequent flooding currently hitting the eastern coast. Six people are confirmed dead from floodwater incidents, and it’s feared another has died but no body has been found yet. Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam is now up to 180.6% capacity – from the 120% that I reported yesterday. They are doing controlled releases of water to avoid dam failure, which means it’s washing downstream towards Brisbane. There’s already flooding of central Brisbane streets from the elevated river level, and flood warnings have been issued fore many suburbs. Current estimates are that around 1500 homes will be flooded in the city tonight and tomorrow.

And that’s just the city. There are smaller towns around the region that are experiencing much worse. Some river levels are up to 22 metres above normal, and thousands of people are being evacuated.

The heavy persistent rain is set to continue for another day or so, and the weather system is moving south, into New South Wales, which is already experiencing flooding in many regions. It’s not anywhere near as bad all the way down here in Sydney, but we’ve received 250 mm of rain in the past four days, and the forecast is for another 150 mm or so in the next few days.

Besides watching the weather reports, I had the 4th class of 6 in my current run of the game design course. Today we worked on combining ideas into a playable set of game rules. The main concept the student came up with for the game is “disagreeing with everyone”. I proposed a few possibilities for how to theme it: (1) a simple party game where you propose business ideas and everyone criticises them, (2) a meeting of philosophers, who naturally can’t agree on anything, or (3) a family gathering, where everyone gets into arguments about various topics. The student chose theme 3 – so we’re now working on a game which is set at a family gathering, and the goal is to argue with all the family members.

I’ll make a first draft of the game rules and equipment—probably just a couple of decks of cards—this week and send it off to the student to playtest before our next lesson next Sunday.

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Post-super busy week: Saturday

Ah, finally, a day off.

The rain continues. It rained heavily all night, and for much of the day. I managed to get my run in during a period if relatively light rain. And I also went out with my wife and Scully in light drizzle to take some product photos of her new range of hand made bangles to match the doggie bandanas she’s been selling on Etsy. She’s planning to launch the bangles on Tuesday.

The rain is much worse further north. Parts of northern New South Wales are in flood emergencies, and southern Queensland is even worse. Wivenhoe Dam, the main water supply storage for Brisbane, went from 55% capacity to 120% in the past 48 hours. The 100% “capacity” level is defined as a safe storage level, above which Queensland Water must release water downriver. It can actually get up to 225% before the dam overflows – but they won’t let it get that high as that would damage and possibly destroy the dam. Last time this happened, in 2011, the released water flooded the streets of central Brisbane. Oh, I just checked news and a flood warning has been issued an hour ago for parts of Brisbane.

I haven’t kept track, but about half a dozen people have died in floodwater so far. Some towns have been evacuated and are preparing for the worst flooding in recorded history.

For dinner tonight I made pesto using bunya nuts, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, salt, and pepper. I served it on penne pasta.

I’ve put most of the bunya nuts into the freezer, because there’s no way we’re going to get through them quickly enough. They’re too rich to eat every day, and I think we have enough for at least a dozen meals, maybe more.

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