weather – Page 9 – dangermouse.net

I’m ready for this humidity to end

This weather is so tiresome… it’s just so humid every day. Temperatures aren’t so bad, getting up around 30°C in the middle of the day, but the darn humidity is pretty much pegged on 100% all night, and only drops to around 70% in the heat of the day. Overnight rain doesn’t help at all as it simply steams up the air the next day when it heats up. I checked the past few days and the humidity hasn’t dropped below about 70% at any time for the at least the past four days. Probably longer, as that’s as far back as the detailed hour-by-hour records go on the Bureau of Meteorology website. So I’m just spending as much time as I can at home with the air conditioner either on cool (in the middle of the day) or dehumidify mode (in the morning and night).

I did take Scully out for a couple of walks, because of course she needs the exercise. At lunch we went up to the fish & chip shop, which has reopened this week after an extended closure over Christmas. I got my usual choice and we went to the high park overlooking the harbour to eat (as opposed to the low park down by the waterside, which is a bit further away).

Apart from that, 5 ethics classes today, and a bit of comics work, and that was pretty much it.

New content today:

Spinal update and heavy rain

This morning I worked on some more Darths & Droids writing. It never ends!

After lunch I had an appointment with my neurologist, following up on the spinal injection procedure I had before Christmas. The numbness in my left leg seems to have been partly relieved by the injection, improving slowly over the past few weeks. I’d say it’s about 50% back towards full sensation now, so a noticeable improvement, but still not back to normal. I told the neurologist this, and she said that this showed that it was indeed the L3 nerve causing the issue. Which is a good thing, because it’s not something else that might indicate more severe problems. She said at this stage the most sensible option is just “wait and see”. It might slowly deteriorate again over the next few years. She also said that if I notice any other symptoms like tingling or numbness anywhere else in the body, I should get it checked up straight away. But for now it seems there’s no serious ongoing issue, as it’s simply minor loss of sensation, with a pinpointed cause, and no effect on any muscles.

And as a bonus, she didn’t even charge me anything for the consultation!

I walked back home via my wife’s work to pick up Scully and take her home. I wanted to hurry a bit because there was incoming rain on the weather radar, to get home before it hit. We made it, and it’s a good thing because it really set in. It’s been raining steadily, sometimes heavy, for the past several hours. It won’t be fun later when I take Scully out for her pre-bedtime toileting. I use a big umbrella and try to stand over her to shelter her from getting too wet, but inevitably there’s some towelling off when we get back inside. It’s been a ridiculously wet summer so far, and seems to just be rolling on. All over Eastern Australia – there are ongoing flood issues both north in Queensland and south in Victoria, but we seem to have missed most of the major floods so far.

I made fried rice for dinner. We were out of the usual vegetables like broccoli and carrots, so I did it with a lot of celery and some chopped Brussels sprouts, which seemed to work okay.

And tonight was the first three classes of my “Minor Laws” ethics topic. I had some interesting discussion with some of the kids, and quite varying opinions on whether it’s okay or not to break laws that thousands of people break every day without caring about it.

New content today:

Very rainy cabin fever

Rain came in overnight and it was very, very heavy. It woke me up a couple of times during the night. We recorded over 60 mm in the city centre, and up to 150 mm in some inland suburbs. It continued into late morning, so I didn’t take Scully for an early walk – we just ducked outside quickly for her toileting and then she wanted to run back inside. She’s not keen on rain.

I had 4 classes, and worked on Darths & Droids scripts a bit. For dinner I made pastry for quiche, and decided to try it with finely chopped celery (since we have a lot of celery at the moment) and I also added some nutmeg. It turned out all right.

My wife and I took Scully for a longer walk in the evening, when the rain had stopped, although it was still very grey. Not an especially interesting Monday, I’m afraid!

New content today:

Another humid day, and games night

Today was another very warm and humid day, similar to but not quite as bad as yesterday. It was very cloudy early, keeping all that moisture in. In fact it rained unexpectedly when I went out to pick up the weekly grocery shopping, quite heavily. When the clouds cleared and the sun came out it just got more steamy.

I did another four ethics classes today on the “Future of Sports” topic. Most of the kids are very sceptical of the idea of robots playing sports with or against humans. Even when I’m very careful to specify that the robots have the same skill as a human player, they often bring up the idea that it’s unfair and the robots will have an advantage.

Tonight is games night. It was supposed to be in person at a friend’s place, but the host came down with a bout of gastro and was vomiting, so we converted it into an online event tonight. I’ve had a poor night so far, losing a game of Ticket to Ride and two of Jump Drive. And I’m currently way behind in a game of Heat: Pedal to the Metal.

New content today:

A record humid weather day

The main talking point today was how ridiculously humid the weather was. The temperature here in Sydney only got up to 30.8°C, but the humidity was so high all day that it was a major topic of discussion with both my friends and also people in the community. We recorded a dew point temperature of 25.9°C, which set a new record for the highest dew point ever recorded in Sydney. The Bureau of Meteorology tells us that dew points above 24°C are considered “oppressive”.

It sure felt that way. I took Scully out for a leisurely 15 minute walk around the block at 8am, not strenuous in any way – we were in fact dawdling along as you do when your dog is sniffing everything. But by the time we got home I was dripping with sweat and my shirt was saturated. It was similar taking her out for a short walk at lunch time. So I’ve been sitting indoors the rest of the day with the air conditioning on, mainly to take the humidity out of the air, not so much to cool it down.

The cicadas have also been going bananas all day, because apparently they love this sort of hot and sticky tropical weather. This is the loudest summer of cicadas I can remember for several years. We don’t have the Magicicada type of periodical cicadas that North America has, so there isn’t a regular cycle of them. I don’t know what controls the numbers but it varies from year to year in an unpredictable way.

I had five ethics classes today. In between I worked a bit on making a new adventure for Professor Plums, the science shop where I’ve been running Dungeons & Dragons occasionally on Saturday nights. But for something different I’m going to run a science fiction game set in the Star Wars universe. But I’m not going to use any of the Star Wars roleplaying games (I have both the WEG d6 one and Genesys system one) – I’m going to use the rules from Scum & Villainy, a Forged in the Dark game system based on Blades in the Dark. The idea is to give the players, who have pretty much done exclusively D&D 5th Edition, a taste of a different genre and a different game system.

New content today:

Christmas lunch and storms

Christmas Day and Scully was up early to see what Santa brought her! She liked her new toy from her buddy Luna.

I had a job: To make the glazed ham. I prepared the ham and then mixed up some orange marmalade with brown sugar and ground cloves. I spread the glaze mix over the ham, and covered it with thin orange slices, held on by toothpicks.

Then baked the lot on a low oven for 45 minutes, basting it a couple of times with the juices.

It turned out really nice, and everyone who had some at lunch liked it. There was also the traditional turkey, roast vegetables, and other stuff. Followed by Christmas pudding and ice cream. It was all delicious, and even though it’s dinner time now I don’t really feel like eating anything.

Normally Christmas Day is hot and sunny, but today it was mild and the clouds came over just after lunch. Storms were on the way. Parts of New South Wales west of Sydney reported tennis-ball sized hail as severe thunderstorms rolled eastward towards the coast. We left earlier than we usually do, to try to beat the storms home. I didn’t fancy having our car out on the street with giant hailstones falling from the sky. We made it home as the rain started, but so far the bad storms have passed either north or south of us. We’ll see how the evening pans out.

New content today:

Christmas Eve lunch with family

It’s Christmas Eve! Scully was super excited when she woke up, because that means it’s only five more sleeps until Christmas!

(counting her various morning and afternoon naps)

Today we had plans for lunch with my mother, brother, and stepfather. We drove up to Gosford, a bit over an hour north of home. The weather forecast was for thunderstorms, and we got some intermittently while driving up on the freeway, and also later during lunch. We met at a pizza place that my mother likes, and sat outside at a table under shelter, so that was fine. The pizzas were pretty good, and we caught up on a lot of things. I don’t see my mother or brother that often, so we had plenty of stories to tell about our trip to Europe.

When we got home we walked up to the supermarket to get some corn chips to make a simple dinner of nachos after the big lunch.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day of course, and we’re heading to my wife’s family for lunch. I need to make the glazed ham in the morning. This year I’m trying an orange marmalade glaze.

The weather is going to be interesting though. The forecast is for severe thunderstorms, with possible hail. I’m really hoping we don’t get hail, because our car will be parked out on the street all day there. I won’t take my traditional after-lunch swim in the harbour, because the water will be murky with the recent rain, which can be dangerous because of bacteria and also increases the risk of sharks.

New content today:

Second day off, cold and wet

The weather today could not have been more different to yesterday. Yesterday was hot and smoky, but the cold front swept through with thunder and lightning about 10pm, and the temperature dropped dramatically. Today was cool, even slightly chilly, and very rainy.

I didn’t venture out except to take Scully quickly for her toilets. I would have put on a raincoat and gone for a walk at lunch, but I hurt my lower back yesterday and wanted to really rest up today. That seems to have worked, since it’s much better this evening compared to last night.

Not much else to say. I worked on comics, both Darths & Droids and Irregular Webcomic!

New content today:

First day off, hot and smoky

Today was the first free day of my Christmas break. I took Scully for a long walk early in the morning before it got too hot, because the forecast was 35°C. it didn’t get that high, however, because of a combination of overcast that made the day very steamy, and the distinct smell of bushfire smoke that drifted in late morning. The smoke made the air very hazy (news story here), but it wasn’t local. It had drifted on the wind from a large bushfire near Narrabri, some 500 km north-west (news story here).

But the walk was before the smoke. It was cooler, but still hot and humid enough to mean I was drenched in sweat by the time we got home, at 9 o’clock. Along the way though I was excited to spot a striated heron! These birds are not common in the area. According to my eBird stats, this is only the third time I’ve seen a striated heron around here since late 2020. I tried to get a photo, but I couldn’t get very close and my phone wasn’t up to zooming in that far with decent quality. But still, this is my first photo of a striated heron! It’s the 127th Australian species I’ve photographed.

For lunch I took Scully for a drive instead of a walk. We went to the Allambie Heights pie shop, which I’ve been craving for a few weeks now, but it’s a bit of a drive so not something I can do any old day. And when we got there, they had special Christmas pies!

These are more expensive than the usual menu, and contained roast turkey, brie, and cranberry sauce. Of course I had to try one! I also got a Thai chicken curry pie to round out lunch. Both the flavours were excellent – this is a pretty good pie shop.

The temperature continued to climb and reached a maximum about 6pm. It’s cooling down slowly now, but there’s a cold southerly change coming through about 11pm tonight, which should bring thunderstorms and cooler temperatures. The next few days are forecast to be much cooler, thankfully.

New content today:

Another hot day

Sydney hit 40°C again today in some places, and unlike last Saturday it stayed hot well into the evening – it was still 33°C at 8pm. The evening news said this has been the hottest first fortnight of summer ever recorded for Sydney.

So I sat in the house most of the day with the air conditioning on. I had to take Scully out at lunch time, and I also needed to get some lunch since I’d run down lunch supplies before tomorrow’s grocery shopping. Rather than take her for a walk, I drove over to Naremburn and we sat in the shade while I got a sausage roll and a lamington from the bakery.

Today’s also a busy day for my ethics classes, with two before lunch and three in the evening. In the afternoon I worked on assembling more the Irregular Webcomic! strips from the photos I took on Monday. Both my first two classes this evening were plagued by Zoom issues, with some kids disconnecting or lagging or having other glitches that meant i had to repeat questions multiple times, and ask kids to repeat their answers multiple times. This occasionally happens, but it was especially frustrating tonight.

New content today: