Hot and thundery - Tropical moisture feed - Jan 4 to 14 2015

[Supercellimpact]

Checked the gauge, overnight we had 25mm. So event total is 70mm. It's still lightly raining too, everything is soaked with so much in 2 days.

[StratoBendigo]

The 500 HPa streamline chart at present tells a story. Amazing fetch from Northern Australia down into Vic.

[Cloudburst]

Showering again now despite nothing on radar in Horsham, up to 20mm for the event, RADAR HOLE at play again!! Had written off today, maybe I spoke too soon.

[adon]

Showering again now despite nothing on radar in Horsham, up to 20mm for the event, RADAR HOLE at play again!! Had written off today, maybe I spoke too soon.

You and I are in the same boat re the radar hole. Massive gap in radar coverage in w Vic really. Radar is nye on useless apart from thunderstorms and mid level rain. This stuff never gets picked up. 30mm so far.

Edit. It has cleared to drizzly showers now.

[StratoBendigo]

Another interesting afternoon in Bendigo. There was quite an intense downpour at around 2:20pm in town - probably about 10mm+ in a matter of minutes and the underground carpark at Bendigo Marketplace caused a few problems. Only a few mm at the airport AWS today which is proving to have a force-field around it as it's receiving only about half what most of the city has had.

Looks to be pretty benign until Tuesday at this stage.

[dazrain]

Looks like BOM have woken a bit from their coma and now 20% chance of showers in the morning today.

The nuffies last night still talked about rain for today. I ignored their "forecast" and wife & kids have a zoo trip planned!

Why have they taken until this morning to readjust?

[Dane]

Been a frustrating system all right DJ.
Really two separate system's, the first system was a real Fizzer (for my area anyway) we had less than 9mm's and are currently on a MTD of just 12mm's. No rain fell in the last 24 hours here and I don't expect any until Tuesday when the 2nd system comes in. Expecting 10 to 20mm's from that, or should I say hoping for that, would not surprise me if I got less than 5mm's.

[Rhino]

OCF has most heavier falls through the wimmera and around the west nth central area at this stage but still useful falls statewide, 10-15mm, and would expect 20-25mm locally here although EC is forecasting around 40mm here but hasn't been doing well lately for my area. Does seem western areas may do best, but they sure need it.

Rhino.

[johnno]

I'm expecting the west and Wimmera to do the best in this system both area have suffered from the big dry the most in Victoria the past 9 to 12 months so badly needed down there!

Northern slopes will also do well as well as the north east. Expecting no more than 10mm here which will make it 15mm for the whole system

[adon]

Yes frustrating system alright! But as I have noticed with several of these systems, we are plagued by left over cloud cover hampering convection and storms to develop. I'm not sure whether it is that the atmosphere in SE Australia cannot handle the amount of moisture that gets dragged down but we always end up with huge amounts of low to mid level convection killing cloud. Storms only develop in clearer spots which in turn gives up patch heavy falls and many areas miss out entirely. I can't remember who was doing the lunch time forecast for the BOM on Friday but he will be dodging eggs flying at his face! He said basically nowhere in the state would be below 50mm when this is done. Now he may be correct IF this low comes off but I don't like the look of it. Still too much cloud around and the best of the moisture feed is heading for NZ.

This was always going to be a hard one though. I said to John earlier in the week that this only needs to be a little off from the models and Vic will miss most of the big totals. As it turned out, a combo of the low cloud the surface trough sitting on or north of the border and the upper trough not having enough punch have meant that the biggest falls were way up north. Not that they didn't need it and IMO better flood an isolated drought area than down here! The rain we have had so far would be welcome by 99% of people and of the next lot comes off it would be too. But the reality was a long way from the model forecasts again. We should have known really. The way they jumped around showed they were struggling.

Anyhoo SE breeze picking up here along with the DP(15). We even have the odd short sunny burst. Hopefully this second lot can come off but not holding breath

[I_Love_Storms]

We have had 25mm so far another 25 or Tuesday brings it up to 50mm. Far from the potential higher falls but still decent for January. The BOM forecast got all of our hopes up, I don't agree with the vagueness of their forecasts. Surely they can provide a written summary in plain English telling people what they want to know ie percentage chance of rain, if it does rain what range of rainfall likely and possible can be expected...really can't be too hard ie for Wednesday they had 0mm forecast but city had 20mm now surely it was possible the city could get that amount - why not put that information out there but still forecast likely rainfall or 0mm?

[Jake Smethurst]

Models very rarely handle anything of a tropical origin (like heavy moisture or a tropical low) when it is moved across southeast Australia, especially Victoria. It's just one of those things where we have to wait until a couple of days before, or even the day before, to get the more specific details, like where the best totals will be etc ... it was a very tricky first system in-terms of having to forecast it. I don't blame the BoM for getting it wrong, but they have been a little topsy turvy on updating their public forecasts to reflect model changes, whereas behind the scenes they were questioning quite a few things. I liked it when they updated their forecasts more than twice a day ... the good old days

This next low pressure system looks pretty good to me as well. Potentially getting as deep as 994 hPa. Hooks into the moisture over the southeast that has been left over from the weekend, and should provide relatively healthy falls between 10-25mm widespread. I agree with others, the Wimmera and parts of the west could do the best out of this system with higher totals up to 40-50mm according to the US and local models. The EC does have those high falls in those parts too but extends some of it over central districts (including parts of Melbourne). Timing of the system looks similar on all models with rain not likely to really extend from the west until into Tuesday.

Here in Brighton currently, a lovely warm breeze but damn humid!

[Macedonian]

3 mm here overnight and some of the thickest mist I've seen up here. Nice and cool again today.
Total of 33 mm for the last week. Bit of a weird system but to receive rain at this time of the year is just the best thing. Happy as.

[droughtbreaker]

Only 22C here today and probaby about 5 minutes of sun (and that's been it for the past 3 days). It's miserable, but at least it keeps the moisture in the soil for as long as possible.

29mm from this sequence so far. Still looking at 10-20mm for Tuesday. If we get the upper limit of that, then the Jan average will be more or less reached after Dec was about 10mm above average.

Heaps of fresh green growth around the area. It actually looks more like late November than Mid Jan.

[jimmyay]

Its actually been a lovely day today, breezy this avo but pretty much sunny most of the day. Certainly not the day, nor the deluge that was being talked about a few days ago. Forecast for cloud all day and its been lovely .

[Australis(Shell3155)]

blow the trunks off tarzan today, noticed the warmth early in the day.
Brilliant blue sky day.. but windy..

[Rhino]

Looks to be a good system statewide, gippsland less rainfall, but OCF gives the whole state some really good falls so looking promising. Still expect 20mm here with higher falls still around the west of the state but thunderstorms in the mix so could be higher spot falls.

Rhino.

[stevco123]

Direct quote from BoM in The Age Newspaper today:

"It will be humid, so if it does rain it will fall pretty quickly," he said.
" wouldn't expect it to be 50 millimetres though."

What's the bet more than 50mm will fall and flash flooding will occur (knowing the BoM's luck)

[johnno]

Get ready Western Victoria, this will be the best rain in some parts in 6 months! Wimmera will also do well, the Mallee, most northern areas and northern slopes, Central areas may also do fairly well if the winds come out of the north east rather than north around the low & Melb and south central parts will also do well and then in the showery south westerly winds behind especially north east and east of the city.

Only places which won't see a lot with this system is central and east Gippsland thanks to the ranges blocking some of the rain but east Gippsland has had a good run in recent times so it won't be a disaster if they don't see too much from this one.

I'm expecting 25 to 50mm through all western and northern areas, up to 50mm about the northern slopes and isolated heavier falls if you get thunderstorms. Melbourne should see between 15 to 40mm, East Gippsland may only see 5 to 10mm.

[wolfcat]

Based on the models and BOM's luck over the last few days, I reckon we are for inbetween 0 and a gazillion mm of rain tomorrow for Central Area's. Take an umbrella and sunscreen tomorrow.